PITTSBURGH’S ALTERNATIVE FOR NEWS, ARTS + ENTERTAINMENT SINCE 1991
August Halter’s redesigns got people asking: should Pittsburgh get a new flag?
BY: STACY ROUNDS
STACY ROUNDS
JORDAN SNOWDEN
THANK YOU FOR ANOTHER YEAR OF READERS’ POLL 2025
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WHAT’S IN A FLAG?
August Halter’s redesigns got people asking: should Pittsburgh get a new flag?
BY: STACY ROUNDS // SROUNDS@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
Some Pittsburgh symbols are instantly recognizable: the three hypocycloids representing U.S. Steel, black and gold everything, terrible towels, the three rivers, and our bridges. People from all over the country and around the world know that these symbols stand for Pittsburgh. Heck, even our skyline, which has been beautifully photographed again and again
by Dave DiCello and a slew of other photographers, is unique and unmistakable. Our current flag is undeniably Pittsburgh, based on the black and gold tricolor background. But the other symbols are less clear. I had to defer to Wikipedia to explain the fortress, which is apparently just a fortress, and the coat of arms, which belonged to William Pitt, the
“YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE TO PUT WORDS ON A FLAG TO MAKE IT A GOOD FLAG.”
First Earl of Chatham, and our city’s namesake. So when August Halter, an artist and vexillologist, posted his redesigned flags for nine cities and towns across Pennsylvania on Pittsburgh’s Reddit, there was some debate as to whether his artistic redesign of our city’s flag was as good as or better than the real one. Personally, I think he nailed it.
IMAGE: COURTESY OF AUGUST HALTER
August Halter's redesigned Pittsburgh flag
WHO IS AUGUST HALTER?
Art has been a lifelong passion for August Halter, and it shines through for him in various ways, from creating his own board games to playing music to crafting chocolates in the kitchen. Flags, however, have fascinated him since he was a little kid. They have been his biggest, longest-running project to date.
“I’ve always been super into geography and art, and I feel like those two things intersected in a really interesting way,” he tells Pittsburgh City Paper
Halter began the flag project while in 10th grade. His sophomore year was interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and he was “ridiculously bored.” Due to that boredom, he was
looking for a project and settled on creating and recreating US city flags.
Halter had discovered that flags of U.S. cities, as a whole, “kind of suck.” He says, “You’ve got a few cities with good flags: Chicago, D.C., Phoenix — all great as far as American cities go. I wasn’t doing much else, and decided to take a crack at redesigning some various cities that people have said, ‘Oh, these flags are bad.’”
At that point, Halter went state by state, redesigning all the flags. It’s been a continual project for him ever since. “Alphabetically speaking, this is my second run through of the country, which I think is a little bit crazy to say,” he says. He admits that his design skills back in high school were not what they are today. “I made a lot of flags. Not a lot of them were good. But it gave me a base to start with. And so looping back around, finishing the country, starting back at the top, is going great.”
When I meet August Halter via Zoom, he’s wearing a Pirates hat. At first, I wondered if he might be a local, but he currently lives in Lebanon, N. H., a small town near Dartmouth.
However, Halter has familial ties to pittsburgh. He says, “This is a national project, so it is very interesting to me that Pittsburgh, in particular, reached out, because I have family there, and I spent summers there as a kid. I’m a big fan of Pittsburgh as a place.”
Halter’s mother was born and raised in O’Hara Township. She lived here until she was about 20 years old. Halter says, “We’ve got grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, all sorts of family there. And so we’d go [to Pittsburgh], for a few weeks to a couple of months every summer when I was a kid. It was always a fun time.”
THE RULES FOR DESIGNING A FLAG
When discussing his designs, Halter makes mention of the book “Good” Flag, “Bad” Flag , which, according to the North American Vexillogical Association, was compiled by Ted Kaye from the expert wisdom of over 20 vexillologists/vexillographers. The book has become the go-to resource for artists like Halter who love to design and re-design flags.
It lays out five basic principles for good flag design: keep it simple, use meaningful symbolism, use two to three basic colors, avoid lettering or seals, and be distinctive.
“These rules are good,” Halter explains. “A lot of people think of them as guidelines, but for me, it’s more important that it is genuinely enjoyed by the people in the city. I can make graphic design flags all day and all night. But
IMAGE: COURTESY OF AUGUST HALTER
August Halter's redesigned Bend, Ore. flag
IMAGE: COURTESY OF AUGUST HALTER August Halter's redesigned Erie flag
if the people living in the city say it sucks, it’s not a good flag.”
Flags, according to Halter, should be recognizable from a distance. A prime example of not being recognizable from afar is Pennsylvania’s state flag. On the other hand, Pittsburgh’s current flag is pretty recognizable.
Another more artistic rule that Halter follows is using colors that look good together. “I’m not going to put bold green next to bold blue,” he says. And not every city fits into a particular color scheme, unlike Pittsburgh. “I think that Pittsburgh really, really leans into those colors. And I love it. It makes designing stuff for Pittsburgh so much fun, because you already have that basis to work with.”
Overall, Halter’s philosophy of what makes a great flag is simplicity, symbolism, and resonance.
HALTER’S PENNSYLVANIA FLAGS
In early August, wh en Halter posted his nine Pa. flags on Reddit, I was floored by the accuracy of Pittsburgh's, and how easily it could be recognized by just about anyone. As an Erie native, however, I knew that the Erie flag design would not be recognizable to most. How many people are aware of the lakeside town’s moniker, “The Gem City?” Even some folks from the area don’t see the town as a gem anymore.
Halter is no stranger to people pointing out the defects of their towns. “People give me a lot of sardonic answers that represent the shortcomings of various places they’ve lived,” he tells City Paper . “I’ll post the state, and I’ll get comments saying that a certain place should be represented with a crack pipe. [That’s a] comment I get on a good 70% of my full state posts.”
When asked about his Pa. designs, specifically, Halter admits to enjoying the rabbit holes of the Commonwealth’s history. “I had a lot of fun with Allentown,” he says, “because when you get into a really historically significant town, that’s the perfect breadth of information to make a really good flag. Pittsburgh, too, is on the upper bounds of how much history a city can have without it being [overwhelming] like Philadelphia.” He explains the difficulty with designing Philly’s flag: “I can’t fit a tenth of that city’s history onto a flag, or else it becomes bad.”
And when I ask Halter about his design of my own hometown, he says, “That flag really posed a challenge for me.” Erie’s existing flag
is unremarkable, with small text in a seal in its center. Halter remarked, “You shouldn’t have to put words on a flag to make it a good flag. And if you take away the part of it that says Erie, you’d have no idea where it’s from.” Halter is proud of his Erie redesign, although it took him over a week to wrap his head around the design before completing the project. “I really liked Erie,” he says. “It was tough, but the product, I felt, was really rewarding.”
Easton, Pa. was even trickier. “They’ve got a really historic flag. I forget the exact place it was flown, but I believe it was flown at a very important meeting in the founding of America. And when I started working on the flag, people told me not to touch it,” he tells CP. Despite that, Halter came up with a simple, considered design that reflects the town’s geography and historical significance.
Reviews on Reddit were mixed for Halther’s Pa. flag redesigns, though most commenters were positive. Halter laments, “70% of people are like, ‘yay!’ while 10% of people are like, ‘this sucks.’ You take that to real life, where the general populace is a lot less welcoming if I come in and say that I want to redesign their city’s flag.”
DESIGNING NEW FLAGS
After designing flags for quite a few years, Halter has a list of over 500 flags people want
him to design from scratch. Most of those cities and suburbs have never had flags. “It’s going to be a very interesting,” he says.
When asked to design an original flag for Bend, Ore., Halter jumped on the opportunity. It became one of his favorite flag designs so far.
The biggest thing Halter struggles with is creating flags for suburbs. “Suburbs are really trying to be disinteresting,” Halter laughs. “What sells to people who want to live in a suburb? Bland feels safe. You can put the name of the suburb in Times New Roman and put a little logo, and that’s acceptable, but I’m not doing that.” As far as identity goes, suburbs are hard to nail down. “It’s hard to find any sort of identity, especially being from Florida. I can sit and redesign 50 Floridian suburb flags, and it is just brutal if they don’t have identity.”
Halter’s philosophy on symbolism and flags has evolved over the years. Early on, he would find a symbol representing a place and then put it on the flag. He realized that a simple symbol wasn’t enough. “I was just making logos. Making logos is fun; don’t get me wrong. But flags shouldn’t be logos,” he says. “Flags should be more emotional, evocative. They should invoke the feelings of a city.”
These days, a lot of that plays more into the use of shapes, lines, and form in Halter’s designs. “There’s a lot of geographic symbolism and historical symbolism that can be
IMAGE: COURTESY OF AUGUST HALTER
August Halter's redesigned Allentown flag
condensed down to shape and line: rivers, mountains, valleys, and stars. If six significant things happened in the history of your city, I may put a six-pointed star on the flag,” he says.
A lot of that symbolism, particularly in places Halter hasn’t been to, comes from research. He spends time scrolling city websites and sometimes Wikipedia. His active research time per city varies. He says, “At the bare minimum, I put in a good 20-30 minutes, just to really get a grasp of the city. I try to find things that are seemingly important to the residents.”
But some cities take him days or weeks to fully grasp. “There are some cities that have genuinely made me pause the project and think, like, how can I get a better grasp on the city?” Halter laments, “I took a three-month break from this project because I got stumped on Corvallis, Ore..” One of his Pa. flags was also a nuisance. “Erie for me was one of those that took a few days, and I did some serious research. For that one, I made, like, three, four, or five designs. There’s a lot of going back to the drawing board.”
Something that is more prevalent now than when Halter started his flag project is the abundance of AI “art” circulating around. “You get a lot of people these days talking about how [my flag project] is shit that AI can do. That is not the case. That is and will never, hopefully, be the case.” he says. It was very important to Halter to state that this project is completely devoid of any artificial intelligence. That is never something he says will be included in his work on flags like his redesigned Pittsburgh flag.
Halter’s familiarity with the city, along with our unique, recognizable colors and symbols, made it one of his favorite city flags to design.
“I’ve had the grace of going to Pittsburgh upwards of 20 times in my life, but I’ve never been to most of the cities [I’ve designed flags for],” Halter explains. “As far as favorites, I promise I’m not being biased, but Pittsburgh is definitely up there. It stands out to me when a flag I designed in the first round of this project is still the same, and Pittsburgh is one that I landed on pretty fast.” •
IMAGE: COURTESY OF AUGUST HALTER
August Halter's redesigned Harrisburg flag
BLACK IN SILVER
A new exhibition chronicles how Black photographers, including those in Pittsburgh, shaped the media landscape
BY: AAKANKSHA AGARWAL // INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
In 1949, a Florida woman named Sara Lee Creech watched two Black girls in her town cradle white baby dolls. The scene unsettled her. Creech set out to create a toy that could carry a different message: a Black-skinned baby with soft features and a neatly pressed dress. The Ideal Toy Company manufactured the doll, which hit store shelves in 1951, one of the first mass-produced Black dolls made with dignity rather than caricature. But they didn’t sell well, and it would be nearly two decades before another toy giant, Mattel, introduced Barbie’s Black friend Christie in 1968.
The short life of Creech’s doll revealed how something as small as a child’s toy could spark a fight over representation, and how slow mainstream culture was to embrace it. That same fight for visibility played out daily on newspaper presses from Pittsburgh to Chicago, where Black photographers documented joy, struggle, and everyday life for readers who rarely saw themselves elsewhere. Photographers for the Pittsburgh Courier, the Chicago Defender, the Atlanta Daily World, and Ebony wielded cameras with urgency: to make Black life visible, to record
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON Carnegie Museum of Art's new Black Photojournalism exhibition
both resistance and celebration, and to push back against a mainstream media that often ignored or distorted their communities.
That labor comes into focus this fall at the Carnegie Museum of Art. Black Photojournalism, which opened Sept. 13 in the Heinz Galleries and runs through Jan. 19, 2026, is a landmark exhibition that brings those photographs into the spotlight. Spanning from the end of World War II through the 1984 presidential campaigns, the show gathers the work of nearly 60 photographers who documented the Civil Rights
Movement, cultural transformation, and daily life across the United States.
One of the images on view, taken by an unidentified photographer, shows Creech on the set of the Kathi Norris Show in 1952, her dolls propped carefully on the table as cameras roll and studio lights glare overhead.
“The exhibition starts in the 1940s, because white-owned publications refused to work with Black writers or photojournalists, and their coverage of Black communities therefore bears the bias they held,” Dan Leers, the museum’s curator of photography, tells Pittsburgh
City Paper. “Most focused exclusively on negative stories, such as crime, drug use, and violence.”
Against that backdrop, Black-owned and -staffed magazines and newspapers flourished, from the launch of Ebony in 1945 to the Courier ’s record circulation of 357,000 in 1947. Together, they built networks and editorial strategies that foregrounded Black life for Black readers.
The exhibition’s chosen window, 1945 to 1984, covers seismic shifts in American history. Soldiers returned from war to a segregated nation. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and ’60s demanded change in the streets and the courts. By the 1980s, Jesse Jackson’s presidential bids signaled a new era of political possibility. Leers notes that this optimism emerged even as Reagan-era policies and the crack epidemic fueled incarceration and reinforced damaging stereotypes. “This section of the exhibition pictures the realities of systematic disenfranchisement of Black people during the decade, while also commemorating and uplifting individuals and moments of celebration that appeared almost exclusively on the pages of Black-owned newspapers,” he explains.
The curators, Leers and Charlene Foggie-Barnett, and the museum’s Charles “Teenie” Harris community archivist, resist reducing the story to protest alone. “Many photographs of civil rights demonstrations and activists have become icons of American culture: think of protestors getting sprayed with fire hoses or attacked by police dogs,” Leers says. “Nearly all these photographs were made by white photographers for white-owned publications, exemplifying how depictions of Black people in the press at the time centered on violence and criminality.”
Alongside these familiar images, the exhibition features photographs of neighborhood beauty queens, choirs in pressed robes, Little League games, and children leaping through the spray of a hydrant. These quieter scenes insist
CP PHOTOS: MARS JOHNSON
Carnegie Museum of Art's new Black Photojournalism exhibition
that everyday life was as newsworthy as public struggle, a reminder that joy itself could be a form of resistance — a fullness of life that rarely appeared in white-owned newspapers.
Black entertainers headlined casinos but were forced to sleep in barracks and cabins because the hotels they performed in remained closed to them.
The exhibition design by artist David
“THESE BRAVE MEN AND WOMEN HAVE CAPTURED OUR PROOF FOR POSTERITY. IT’S UP TO VISITORS TO UTILIZE THE IMAGES AND TELL THE STORIES THEY REVEAL.”
For local audiences, the exhibition feels especially resonant. The Courier , once a leading Black newspaper, anchors the story. Its Washington Bureau archive is among the many collections featured in Black Photojournalism alongside materials from Howard University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and the Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Central to the show is Charles “Teenie” Harris, whose archive — more than 70,000 images preserved by the Carnegie Museum of Art — documents life in Pittsburgh’s Hill District from the 1930s through the 1970s.
“Black Photojournalism helps describe the constellation of Black journalists, photographers, and publishers of which Harris was a key part,” Leers says.
Foggie-Barnett sees Harris' work reframed in dialogue with his peers nationwide. “The shared community connection that all these Black photographers had was one of the most important aspects of their careers,” she tells City Paper. “That advantage allowed them to move freely in situations to capture more truthful moments.”
She also points to stories that surface across the archives, like the five generations of women who sustained the Baltimore Afro-American , now preserved by Savannah Wood, who is building a new facility to house millions of photographs. Or the images of the Moulin Rouge in Las Vegas, where
Hartt clusters photographs as conversations rather than isolated works. A shot of King arriving at an airport might be paired with children at play, echoing how the Black press placed front-page politics beside neighborhood pride. Leers credits Hartt with shaping nearly every element of the installation — from furniture and lighting to large-scale photographic enlargements — creating what he calls a thoughtful and immersive environment for visitors. The show also emphasizes materiality: original prints marked with grease pencils, crop lines, and typed captions remind visitors that these were working documents, not gallery art.
As a community archivist, FoggieBarnett says her own lived experience informs her selections. “I know Charles ‘Teenie’ Harris’ story, his practices, and the pitfalls he survived, like not being paid for film, flash bulbs, or photo chemicals, but only for the finished product — a beautiful photo print,” she explains. “These issues have been echoed in the conversations I’ve had with surviving photographers and archivists.” For her, the show highlights the motivation, proximity, and trust required to capture these images in the first place.
One photograph resonates especially strongly for her: Harris’ image of a segregated Pittsburgh pool, shot from outside the fence with the barrier visible in the frame. “As if to say, ‘I can’t get in here — see the barrier?’” she says. When the pool was finally
Leers and Foggie-Barnett, presenting work by 57 photographers and about 200 photographs (some of which are not displayed in the gallery), with contributions from scholars like Joy Bivins, Tina M. Campt, and Gerald Horne. The catalog allows the images and stories to reach audiences beyond the closing of the show in January 2026.
“The content in Black Photojournalism serves as proof of the real history of Blacks in these eras in America,” Foggie-Barnett says. “It was almost seamless from Pittsburgh to New York, to Dallas, to Los Angeles, to Atlanta, to Washington state, and Washington, D.C. These brave men and women have captured our proof for posterity. It’s up to visitors to utilize the images and tell the stories they reveal.”
Just as Sara Lee Creech believed a doll could shape how a child saw themselves, these photographs shaped how Black communities — and ultimately the nation — understood their own history. This fall, their stories move from newsroom archives to museum walls, asking us to see them anew.
•
Black Photojournalism.
Continues through Jan. 19, 2026
Carnegie Museum of Art. 4400 Forbes Ave., Oakland. Included with regular admission.
carnegieart.org
CP PHOTOS: MARS JOHNSON
Carnegie Museum of Art's new Black Photojournalism
CP PHOTOS: MARS JOHNSON
Carnegie Museum of Art's new Black Photojournalism exhibition
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON, WINDOW ART: KIAN DUBAY Zoe Davis and Aiden Flame, co-owners of Headstone Salon in Millvale
GOTHIC GLAMOR IN MILLVALE
Headstone Salon is bringing inclusive alternative haircuts and art to the booming borough
BY: ATIYA IRVIN-MITCHELL // INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
In the borough of illvale you can find music festivals bre eries a local library and as of a fe eeks ago eadstone alon and allery a place that co-o ners iden lame and oe avis hope becomes a safe haven and a gallery a go-to for gothic styling services
hree months ago avis’ do nstairs neighbor moved out avis asn’t thrilled about the possibility of an unkno n ne entity taking their place he former business as a salon so it had a ready-made set-up she tells Pittsburgh City Paper ot being a hairdresser by trade gave avis a momentary pause until she remembered she had friends ith e pertise
“I LOVE WHEN I HAVE CLIENTS WHO TELL ME THAT I MADE THEM FEEL LIKE THEMSELVES.”
iden had been doing my hair for years and it as already a salon but there asn’t anything particularly special about it so e came in and e made it special avis says e made this place thrive in a ay that it hadn’t previously kno n and really it as kind of like almost having some security in my life too
Davis handles the business operations, while Flame handles the hairdressing and curates the artwork featured throughout the salon. The pair have been friends for years, share several mutual friends, and Davis had e perienced lame’s services firsthand therefore, they felt familiar enough with each other’s strengths to go into business together.
Flame, who began studying cosmetology at 15 and became a licensed practitioner at 17, says Davis’ request to be her business partner was a dream come true.
“Zoe randomly hit me up … and I couldn’t believe that something I had dreamed about since I was a teenager was being delivered to me, so I was like, ‘Yes, I want to do that absolutely,’” Flame says.
Now that Headstone is up, running, and open to the public the services they offer include cuts, styling, extensions, and colors in “dramatic hues.” Additionally, visitors can book deep conditioners, general styling, and self-care packages, or have headshots taken.
Looking back on her own education, Flame remembers that the cosmetology school she attended had a rigid attitude about beauty and didn’t teach its students about textured hair or vivid hair color, meaning non-naturally occurring hair colors such as blue or green. Flame recalls that her education took a turn for the better when an instructor from out of town came and helped her learn styling techniques not included in the syllabus.
Davis and Flame agree that, as an alternative person, sometimes salons aren’t always elcoming or affirming of self-e pression At Headstone, Davis says she’d like people to come in and know that the salon is a place where they can be authentic and not judged.
he first time that iden and opened she said, ‘Look, you got to get your hair done before we open. You have to look like a salon owner now.’ So she did my hair, and I realized that I had always not really gone to salons in life because I am alternative, and sometimes I can be judged when I do go to salons,” Davis says. “I was crying when she was doing my hair in here the first time because as like ‘This is why we’re doing this.’”
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON Headstone Salon and Gallery co-owner Aiden Flame
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON, WINDOW ART: KIAN DUBAY Headstone Salon in Millvale
In the weeks they’ve been in business, Davis and Flame agree that they’ve been met with kindness and support from the community, and in particular, their fellow local business owners. The two look forward to welcoming their neighbors to a variety of events, starting with the salon’s planned Tattoo Flash and Self-Care Night on Sept. 28, featuring a movie, snacks, self-care services, and tattoos by a local artist.
“We’ll have specials for self-care packages, like deep conditioners and a trim and things like that. On a regular day, the service list is a little shorter, but by appointment, we can book almost anything that somebody might need, and it’s just a matter of me connecting them to the right stylist,” Flame says. “And then we’re also going to have special event days where we’re open after hours.”
Ultimately, the duo hopes to make the salon a safe place where their clients can become their most authentic selves.
“I want to make people feel good about themselves. As a stylist, I love when I have clients who tell me that I made them feel like themselves or I made them feel like they were safe to express how they really want to look,” Flame says. or the gallery ant to offer a space here artists can trust that their work is safely housed here and respected, and hopefully try to get some money o ing into the community by selling things.” •
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON
Zoe Davis co-owner of Headstone Salon in Millvale
CRYPTO CLASH
How Pittsburgh author Patrick McGinty turned his short-lived obsession with cryptocurrency into his latest novel, Town College City Road
BY: JORDAN SNOWDEN // INFO@PGHCITYPAPER.COM
Patrick McGinty has always been drawn to roads. Raised in Pittsburgh’s South Hills with grandparents in Grove City, he spent countless hours traveling I-79, soaking in the landscapes of Butler and Mercer counties.
Now a professor of writing at Slippery Rock University, McGinty has translated that familiarity into fiction is ne novel Town College City Road (University of Wisconsin Press), follows Kurt Boozel, a queer math prodigy from a struggling steel town, as he navigates the shifting terrain of masculinity, ambition, and belonging across Pennsylvania and beyond.
The book unfolds in four parts — town, college, city, and road — charting Kurt’s uneasy passage from a bullied Rust Belt teenager to a fraternity outsider, to a crypto-curious Wall Street professional. Along the way, c inty e amines ho place in uences identity and how the promises of new technologies can become intertwined with personal mythologies of escape and reinvention.
“It’s the kind of book I always wanted to write,” McGinty tells Pittsburgh City Paper . “I gravitate toward novels that feel like Venn diagrams, multiple circles overlapping. But in my 20s, when I tried writing those, I just gave readers
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON Patrick McGinty
concussions. So, with this one, I forced myself to be strict with structure. First, the small town comingof-age. Then the college novel. Then finance hen a road novel hat gave me room to be big in scope without losing the thread.”
Although Kurt’s journey stretches from small-town locker rooms to New York City boardrooms, its roots are firmly planted in estern Pennsylvania. McGinty grew up with family stories of union halls and night shifts, and he spent years returning to Grove City, where his grandmother worked as a nurse and his grandfather as a steelworker.
riting this book hile living in Portland, I was relying on memory and those family stories,” McGinty says. “Then, moving back to Pittsburgh, teaching at Slippery Rock, I saw the region with fresh eyes, through my students, through the drives as making definitely feel like I know [I-79] very well.”
That deep knowledge of place, McGinty argues, comes with a kind of insecurity unique to the Rust Belt.
“Our towns are so susceptible to the fantasies the tech sector peddles: revitalization, renaissance, that kind of language. It’s dangerous. And I’m guilty of it too. Crypto, for me, was part of that temptation: 'Maybe this will be my way out, my new home. That’s a very Rust Belt impulse I wanted to capture in Kurt”.
c inty’s first novel Test Drive (2020), examined the driverless car industry and how it reshaped Pittsburgh’s identity. Town College City Road builds on that interest in the collision of technology, economics, and community. Set largely during the Obama years and the aftermath of the financial crisis the book situates Kurt at the edge of multiple upheavals the ccupy all Street movement, the emergence of Bitcoin and the shifting definitions of success in a precarious world.
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CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON Patrick McGinty
McGinty admits he was once “crypto-curious.” During the pandemic, he found himself listening to crypto podcasts, reading obsessively, and even asking whether digital currencies might be the lifeline for Rust Belt towns. But as his research deepened, skepticism grew. “There’s a false promise there,” he says. “The idea that you can take money out of the political process isn’t apolitical at all. It’s deeply political. Still, I didn’t want to put my thumb on the scale. I wanted the book to show what it felt like in real time to be seduced by that possibility.”
At the center of all this is Kurt, a character who resists easy labels. In a blurb praising Town College City Road , Alex Myers, author of Revolutionary, describes Kurt as “neither a hero nor quite an underdog,” a protagonist defined as much by contradiction as by clarity.
character, same impulses, but with ne layers of empathy confidence or recklessness. That’s where you see growth, or lack of it”.
Fittingly, the novel ends on the road. For McGinty, it’s more than a plot device; it’s a love letter to the act of driving itself.
“I think driving is the perfect narrative speed,” he says. “On a walk, you see too much. In a room, too little. But in a car, you get a thought, a sight, a sound, and then you move on. That rhythm just works for me. I love Pennsylvania highways. I love stopping in little to ns fishing getting to know new places. Ending the book on the road felt like a treat I’d been saving.”
“OUR TOWNS ARE SO SUSCEPTIBLE TO THE FANTASIES THE TECH SECTOR PEDDLES: REVITALIZATION, RENAISSANCE, THAT KIND OF LANGUAGE. IT’S DANGEROUS.”
McGinty says that complexity re ects his o n life ’ve been different people at different times Political awareness came late for me. Becoming a father changed me. Being part of my faculty union changed me. I wanted Kurt to feel like that, too, someone whose work ethic and ambition are constant, but whose understanding of what those mean shifts over time.”
One way McGinty captured that was through what he calls echo scenes ’d rite urt in a fistfight as a teenager, then echo that with a confrontation in college, then echo it again in a boxing gym. Same
For McGinty, writing Town College City Road was as much about tracing Kurt’s path as it was about re ecting on his o n hether recalling childhood drives up I-79, listening to students wrestle with identity at Slippery Rock, or navigating Pittsburgh’s ever-shifting relationship with technology, he sees echoes of himself in his character’s search for belonging.
“I wanted to write a book that felt big, but also personal,” he says. “Kurt is always moving, between towns, between identities, between ideas of what success looks like. That’s the story of a lot of us in estern ennsylvania e’re trying to figure out here e fit and hether home is something we return to, or something we have to rebuild.” •
BOOK LAUNCH:
Patrick McGinty of Town College City Road with Candace Opper and Sarah Marshall 7-8 P.M. FRI., SEPT. 26. White Whale Bookstore. 4754 Liberty Ave., Bloomfield. Free. Registration required. Livestream available. whitewhalebookstore.com/events
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON Patrick McGinty
MAGIC • DOWNTOWN
SEVEN DAYS
BY CP STAFF
Ehrlich Brothers: Diamonds 7:30 p.m. Benedum Center. Seventh Street and Penn Avenue, Downtown. $43.07-107.97. trustarts.org
IN PITTSBURGH SEPT. 30
THU., SEPT. 25
MUSIC • STRIP DISTRICT
Steel City Cabaret presents Dream Roles
7 p.m. The Original Pittsburgh Winery. 2809 Penn Ave., Strip District. $10. instagram.com/cabaretpgh
OUTDOORS • NEIGHBORHOOD
Pittsburgh Underwear Ride 8 p.m. 46th Street and Butler Street, Lawrenceville. Free. instagram.com/pittsburghunderwearride
FRI., SEPT. 26
ART • SEWICKLEY
Mavuno 2025 and Susannah Klinvex
Opening Reception 5-8 p.m. Sweetwater Center for the Arts. 200 Broad St., Sewickley. Free. sweetwaterartcenter.org
ART/PARTY • FRIENDSHIP
Art on Fire Celebration and Auction
6-11 p.m. Pittsburgh Glass Center. 5472 Penn Ave., Friendship. $200. pittsburghglasscenter.org
MUSIC • LAWRENCEVILLE
Momma with Villagerrr 8 p.m. Doors at 7 p.m. Spirit. 242 51st St., Lawrenceville. $35.25. spiritpgh.com
PARTY • ALLENTOWN
Deep Sea Disco. 8 p.m. Bottlerocket Social Hall. 1226 Arlington Ave., Allentown. $10. 21 and over. bottlerocketpgh.com
SAT., SEPT. 27
CONVENTION • MONROEVILLE
Steel City Mega Pet Expo 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Continues through Sun., Sept. 28. Monroeville Convention Center. 209 Mall Blvd., Monroeville. $10. All ages. monroevilleconventioncenter.com
EXHIBITION • POINT BREEZE
The Scandinavian Home: Landscape and Lore. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Continues through Jan. 11, 2026. The Frick Art Museum. 7227 Reynolds St., Point Breeze. Included with regular admission. thefrickpittsburgh.org
TOUR • HOMEWOOD
Prime Stage Theatre Cemetery Walk Tours start at 12 p.m. The Homewood Cemetery. 1599 S. Dallas Ave., Homewood. $20. primestage.com/events
PARTY • EAST LIBERTY
Assemble presents MakerDate 2025: Let’s Play! 6-9 p.m. 5 p.m. VIP. The Maverick Hotel. 120 S. Whitfield St., East Liberty. $75-100. assemblepgh.org/makerdate
MUSIC • NORTH SIDE
Swoll, Essential Machine, and El Grosso 7:30 p.m.
Doors at 7 p.m. The Government Center. 715 East St., North Side. $10 in advance, $12 at the door. thegovernmentcenter.com
SUN., SEPT. 28
FILM • MULTIPLE LOCATIONS
Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival. Showtimes vary. Continues through Sun., Oct. 5. Multiple locations. Ticket prices vary. pittsburghsilentfilmsociety.org
PARTY • NORTH SHORE
Bop at the party of the year when Slappers N Bangers celebrates its 10th anniversary at Stage AE. The DJ duo, known for highlighting trap, hip hop, and club hits, will be joined by Solo Dolo, King Bradley, Ms Tiza, Doctor Dap, Slim Tha DJ, Icy Pisces, and Houston-based act DJ Adonis. Show up and throw down at this big event. 4-10 p.m. 400 North Shore Dr., North Shore. $35-45. 21 and over. promowestlive.com
MUSIC • BURGETTSTOWN
Twenty One Pilots with Dayglow. 8 p.m. The Pavilion at Star Lake. 665 Route 18, Burgettstown. Tickets start at $69 (nice). pavilionstarlake.com
MON., SEPT. 29
FILM • DOWNTOWN
Hong Kong Cinema Classics: A Chinese Ghost Story and City on Fire. Showtimes vary. Continues through Wed., Oct. 8. Harris Theater. 809 Liberty Ave., Downtown. $10-13. trustarts.org
SEPT.28
PHOTO: FIONA TORRE Franz Ferdinand at Roxian Theatre
CP PHOTO: MARS JOHNSON Slappers N Bangers at Stage AE
TUE., SEPT. 30
MUSIC • MCKEES ROCKS
Attention, indie sleaze and dance punk fans! Relive your first-gen iPod days at Roxian Theatre during a night with Franz Ferdinand. The Scottish group, known for such eradefining hits as “Take Me Out,” “This Fire,” and “No You Girls,” stops in Pittsburgh with Master Peace during a tour celebrating the 20th anniversary of their album You Could Have It So Much Better. 8 p.m. Doors at 7 p.m. 425 Chartiers Ave., McKees Rocks. $29-89. roxiantheatre.com/shows
MUSIC • LAWRENCEVILLE
Felly with John Robert. 8 p.m. Doors at 7 p.m. Thunderbird Music Hall. 4053 Butler St., Lawrenceville. $33.26-129.56. thunderbirdmusichall.com
WED., OCT. 1
27
GAMES • MULTIPLE LOCATIONS
Get on board for Chess Week in Pittsburgh, a four-round public tournament for youth players up through grade 12. Presented by Queens Gambit and Sarah Heinz House, Chess Week welcomes players of all levels to compete in an environment meant to foster “sportsmanship, critical thinking, and connection.” Matches and events take place at locations throughout the city, including a Downtown festival on Sixth Avenue. Times vary. Continues through Wed., Oct. 8. Multiple locations. Free. All ages. qgchess.org
MUSIC • LAWRENCEVILLE
Toad the Wet Sprocket: Good Intentions Tour with Vertical Horizon 8 p.m. Doors at 7 p.m. Carnegie of Homestead Music Hall. 510 E. 10th Ave., Munhall. $63.71-263.13. librarymusichall.com
28
PHOTO: PUBLIC DOMAIN
Ben-Hur (1925), part of the Pittsburgh Silent Film Festival
PHOTO: COURTESY OF 2PM SHARP
Ehrlich Brothers: Diamonds at the Benedum Center
NAME CHANGE
IN The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: NO. GD-25-007735, In re petition of Cynthia Lee Young-Smith, change of name to Cindy Lee Young-Smith. To all persons interested: Notice is hereby given that an order of said Court authorized the filing of said petition and fixed the 24th 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.
MARKET PLACE
NAME CHANGE
IN The Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania: NO. GD-25-007007, In re petition of Paulina H. Taylor Motu-Mokuy, change of name to Paulina H. Taylor Fonji. To all persons interested: Notice is hereby given that an order of said Court authorized the filing of said petition and fixed the 1st day of October, 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.
ESTATE NOTICE
ESTATE OF GALLA, JOANNE, A, DECEASED OF BRIDGEVILLE, PA No. 04197 of 2025. Bernard Galla Extr. 10 Landgraf Ave, Bridgeville, PA, 15017
ESTATE NOTICE
ESTATE OF ANDREWS, GABRIEL KING
A/K/A IF NECESSARY, GABRIEL, KING ANDREWS, DECEASED OF PITTSBURGH, PA No. 022504855 of 2025. Suzanne Andrews Extr. 340 Bank Street, Sewickley, PA 15143
ESTATE NOTICE
ESTATE OF HICKEY, GARY, W DECEASED OF PITTSBURGH, PA No. 02230576 of 2023. Michelle Hickey Extr. 449 Ridgemont Drive, Pittsburgh, PA 15220
ESTATE NOTICE
ESTATE OF ALICE FAYE VAN DINE , A/K/A IF NECESSARY, ALICE FAYE VANDINE, DECEASED OF CORAPOLIS, PA No. 02266 of 2025. S . D Panyko Extr. 132 East Beaver Street, Sewickley, PA 15143
SERVICES GORDON MERCHANDISING SOLUTIONS - providing all merchandising services for your business. Email:tgordon@ columbusconsulting.com
ESTATE NOTICE
ESTATE OF DOMITROVIC, CATHERINE, M.,
A/K/A IF NECESSARY, DOMITROVIC, CATHERINE B., DECEASED OF GIBSONIA, PA No. 022505307 of 2025. Eric L. Domitrovic Extr. 4119 Grandview Drive, Gibsonia, PA, 15044 or Richard W. Snyder Attorney, 26 Dogwood Lane, Grove City, PA, 16127
LEGAL NOTICE
Carnelian Quill
Entertainment is closed. Current projects will be continued under new management
PUBLIC AUCTION
Extra Space Storage will hold a public auction to sell the contents of leased spaces to satisfy Extra Space’s lien at the location indicated: 6400 Hamilton Ave. Pittsburgh, PA 15206 October 15, 2025 at 1:45 PM. Shari Johnson-2087, Leona Pettegrew-2125, Reuben Turner-L089. The auction will be listed and advertised on www. storagetreasures.com. Purchases must be made with cash only and paid at the above referenced facility in order to complete the transaction. Extra Space Storage may refuse any bid and may rescind any purchase up until the winning bidder takes possession of the personal property.
PERSONALS
HALFBACKS
Animal that’s foaming at the mouth
33. Buys things
34. Signal positively towards 35. Chain letters?
36. Aphrodite’s sidekick
37. No longer drinking 38-Across
38. See 37-Across
39. Gear piece
40. More sordid
41. Fatty acid, e.g.
42. “She’s A Beauty”
rock band
44. Reword things?
45. German bar tender?
46. Repair
47. You’re basking for it
48. Red letter
50. Record Store Day purchase
52. Fifth sign of the zodiac
53. Singer Styles’ red wine?
58. Hair covering in the kitchen
59. Marble in some jewelry
60. Drug test sample
61. New product announcements
62. Length in swimming
63. Anxiety medication
DOWN
1.
Oust
2. Inititials between names
3. Veronika Slowikowska’s show
4.
Sporty shirt brand
5. Bundles up
6.
Game screen?
7. Sit on it!
8. Talk while waving?: Abbr.
9. Longest key
10. Joined in
the skirmish
11. Put a roof on a train station?
12. Unit to plow
13. It smells
18. It’s a guy thing
22. Lucky people might get one: Abbr.
23. Creepy-crawly
24. Scooby-Doo gulp
25. Award accomplishments for Larry, Moe, or Curly?
27. Skywalker’s dad
29. Army cops: Abbr.
30. Monk’s’ attire
31. Iroquoian language
32. Where dirty work is done?
34. They smell
37. Beastie Boys song that begins
“I can’t stand it!”
38. Zebra rival
40. Musical comedian Bo
41. Luxury crossover SUV from Toyota
43. Calendar col.
44. “I want it first!”
46. Philly hockey player
48. Bone under a watch
49. Marsh twig
50. Works of Raphael
51. “___ Breckenridge”
54. Sleazebag
55. ___ gong (Chinese “singing bowl”)
56. Actress Ortiz
57. Witches voodoo
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