Spotted this in Pittsburgh. There were a few of these on a pedestrian bridge not far from the stadium.
Of course, a pre-BALCO Bonds started his career with the Pirates in the late 80′s. I think he was only a XXL back then.
Tag Archives: Pittsburgh
ONE WEEKEND IN PITTSBURGH: How did they get incline from funiculaire, anyways?
I had originally planned to check out the Warhol Museum on Monday–but it turns out they’re closed Mondays, for whatever reason. So I took to the net to find out what else there was to do downtown. Couple things popped up: Station Square, the self-proclaimed “premier dining and entertainment destination with unique specialty shops” and the Pittsburgh inclines, old-school cable cars that take you up to the hoity-toity Mt. Washington neighbourhood and a great view of the city from the top.
Unfortunately, most of the bars and restaurants that make up Station Square aren’t open for lunch on Monday, and the “unique specialty shops” are few and far between. I did buy some local chocolate from a candy store and picked up a Larry Flynt biography for the super-low price of $1.98, though. There was also a massive store selling all kinds of Steelers stuff, but I didn’t dare set foot in that one.
This is the view of the Square coming in from across the bridge.
Pittsburgh’s first-ever steel furnace, or something like that…
Had lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe, where along with the AC/DC, Nirvana and Poison memorabilia, a Danzig road case, some stuff from shitty nu-metal bands–including a 10X platinum plaque awarded to fuckin’ Creed that almost made me lose my appetite–I was surprised to see this piece of Canadian rock history:
A signed Gil Moore bass drum head! Oh, and some dude named Cobain’s guitar, off to the bottom right.
After lunch, I headed up on the Monongahela Incline, to see what I could see. This thing is fully automated, with an operator at the top, and the inside looks a little like this:
The site of Pittsburgh’s first coal mine (as per this sign below), Mt. Washington is now an upscale neighbourhood (think Forest Hill) with nice restaurants, big houses, churches–even houses that look like churches.
Case in point.
The view from the lookout points along the aptly-named Grandview Ave offered a picture-perfect outlook down onto the city. So naturally, I took a few photos.
Heinz Field, home of the Steelers, off in the distance.
The Wyndham hotel (where I stayed) is the beige building in the foreground, with PNC Park just across the river.
A closer look at Heinz Field.
I figured I’d take the Monongahela Incline up, then walk across and take the Duquesne Incline back down, since the latter was closer to my hotel. Only problem was that there’s no way to get across the river from there, so I had to walk back to Station Square. Let’s just say I got a lotta exercise on Monday…
View of Heinz Field from the Duquesne Incline.
ONE WEEKEND IN PITTSBURGH: PNC Park is the best ballpark in America. It says so on their beer!
Now I’ve been to a buncha Blue Jays games at Rogers Centre, with its retractable roof and artificial turf, but I hafta say, I was looking forward to a more authentic MLB experience at the self-proclaimed “Best Ballpark in America.” It helped that my hotel was right across the river from the stadium, the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals were in town and there were plenty of great sections still available. What I wasn’t counting on were the frigid temperatures–a midday high of 44 degrees Fahrenheit, which translates to a balmy 7 degrees Celsius.
The ballpark largely lived up to its billing, though. A well-designed, modern facility right on the river, twas just a short trip across the Roberto Clemente Bridge. Outside the stadium were several statues honouring past Pirates greats–as well as a giant inflatable mascot.
Me, I was seated in Section 205, also known as the Pirates Cove. A second-tier seat down the first-base line costs 20 bucks in Pittsburgh, and that also includes a 10-dollar food voucher. As it turns out, a large trey of nachos and a plastic pint of local draught beer cost me 15 bucks, so that voucher covered two-thirds of lunch. And hey, the view from 205 wasn’t too bad, either…
It’s worth noting this was taken about an hour before the first pitch, so that’s why the stands were empty…
Mind you, there weren’t too many people in the stands by the time this one was taken, either.
Local brew IC Light tastes kinda like Coors Light, but with a bit more flavour.
Sadly, the home team didn’t put up much of a fight against the defending World Series champs. Held scoreless through seven innings, they finally got on the board in the bottom of the eighth, but any chances of a comeback were spoiled when they gave up two more in the ninth to lose 5-1. The two Cards on my fantasy team didn’t do anything either, Holliday and Beltran combining for just one hit and three strikeouts. So that was a little disappointing…
After the game, I headed over to the Jerome Bettis Grille to warm up and stifle my whooping cough with a few beers. Apparently Hines Ward had just retired, which I wasn’t previously aware of.
As I watched the Bruins and Caps go at in in Game 6, I chowed down on a Bettis-sized burger. Yes, that is a beef patty between two grilled-cheese sandwiches–with bacon, no less!
Alas, I didn’t stick around for the L.A.-Vancouver game, but I was quite pleased with the result. 
AMATEUR CONCERT PHOTOGRAPHY HOUR: DREAM DEATH/ARGUS @ 31st St Pub, Pittsburgh, April 21, 2012
It’s a good thing I took the band’s advice and bought my ticket in advance. When I arrived at the 31st St Pub, on the outskirts of Pittsburgh’s Strip District (thing an elongated Kensington Market), the sign on the door said SOLD OUT tickets only, or something to that effect. The bar is sort of a double-wide Bovine, albeit with its stage at the back of the room. They had a big cupboard full of skulls, and the ceiling and back wall were decorated by drum heads, cymbals and guitars from the likes of High on Fire, Weedeater and Antiseen. Also behind the bar was a G.G. Allin clock along with his obit and a ticker that said Fuck (pretty much every other venue in the city). Classy joint.
The opening band was some sorta Pantera/Hatebreed hybrid, and since I noticed the low battery indicator flashing on my camera, I decided not to waste any juice on them. As a result, I didn’t get too many pictures of Argus, either. But lemme tell ya, they put on a great set. One of my favourite epic doom bands going, they busted out material from their two studio albums, with affable frontman Butch Balich noting “This is definitely the biggest crowd we’ve played to in Pittsburgh–and also the ugliest!” (I suppose I was partially responsible for that remark, being up front and all…)
As you can see, the force of Butch’s headbanging knocked my camera out of focus!
As Dream Death took an awfully long time to set up, you could feel the anticipation building, along with the urge to urinate–but hey, I was NOT giving up my spot for this. It was, after all, their first gig in 24 years! But the band sounded as good as ever, hell, better than some of the dodgy demos and bootlegs in their discography. The live sound added bite to those lost classic tracks offa Journey Into Mystery, while they also included stuff from some of their demos (compiled under the Back from the Dead comp) in their 75-minute set and even busted out a brand-new tune. Twas truly an evening to remember… These pics hardly do it justice!
(Turns out I had plenty of battery life left, after all!)
ONE WEEKEND IN PITTSBURGH: Turns out the Heinz History Center only has one wing dedicated to ketchup…
Pittsburgh’s Strip District is home to many shops and restaurants, including the original Primanti’s, but its most imposing attraction is the Senator John Heinz History Center, a six-story museum that includes the Western Pennsylvania Sports Museum amongst its many exhibits. And yes, there is a wing dedicated to Heinz ketchup, too. In fact, they even have this vintage ketchup truck parked in the lobby:
The museum’s first floor contained an exhibit about the American flag, so I quickly breezed through it for much the same reason that I went to the bathroom during the singing of “God Bless America” at the baseball game. I’ve got no problem with American patriotism–just don’t expect me to participate in it. Yinz (which is how they say y’all in Pittsburgh) couldn’t find Calgary on a map of Canada, so I think we’re even. That said, there were a few things on the ground floor that caught my eye…
I’m pretty sure this is a reference to slavery, not the British rock band from the 70′s.
These were worn by American soldiers in the war. Word has it that’s Mandarin for Take me to the nearest “barber shop.”
This flag was the symbol of the Know Nothing Party, an 18th-century precursor to today’s Tea Party, as some people say…
Didn’t get to see the Warhol Museum (closed on Mondays!), so this would hafta do.
Upon entering the Sports Museum on the second floor, I was greeted by two things. One was this lifelike statue of The Immaculate Reception:
And the other was this display case of memorabilia from The Super Bowl That Never Happened.
(I’m just glad there wasn’t a statue immortalizing The Low Block.)
Although the museum honoured a variety of local sports teams and athletes, it was mainly a shrine to how crazy Steelers fans are. Case in point:
Exhibit A
Exhibit B
Exhibit C
Exhibit D (that was someone’s bedsheet!)
(This pretty much sums it up.)
(OK, so I think this is a promotional item for a roller derby, not a maxi-pad substitute…)
Mind you, the museum wasn’t solely focused on football. It also paid homage to native sons such as Tony Dorsett, Arnold Palmer and…
Marble King Doug Opperman!
They’re kinda like the KISS Army, cept they wear chinos…
Dock Ellis wasn’t the only pitcher to throw a no-hitter–but he was the only one to do so while trippin’ on LSD.
The museum’s fourth floor contained traditional artifacts from the city’s cultural mosaic. Stuff like this:
(OK, so this one was still part of the sports exhibit.)
(This bearded creature with light-up eyes was used to scare Jewish children. Any resemblance to Osama bin Laden is purely coincidental.)
Suffice to say this is a tradition they’re probably not so proud of.
The finest tradition of them all, right here!
And yes, like I said before, there is also an entire wing dedicated to Heinz ketchup, including some vintage tomato-paste propaganda:
Surprisingly, this product never caught on…
I hafta say, I was quite shocked to see an exhibit in both of Canada’s official languages on the fifth floor, complete with life-sized figurines…
On a side note, it says here that Pittsburgh is the Birmingham of America. Funny, I can only think of one legendary metal band from this place…
(More on that tomorrow!)
ONE WEEKEND IN PITTSBURGH: I’m back… from the dead!
Just got in from Pittsburgh a couple hours ago. Nice city, very modern, friendly people, etc. Had a minor hiccup at the airport as I was leaving, but other than a hefty phone bill that I should rightfully be able to charge to United Airlines–if only it worked that way–I’ve got no complaints. Dream Death was great (so was Argus), and the Pirates have a real nice stadium, although outdoor baseball in single-digit (Celsius) weather is definitely not for me. Also, the Senator John Heinz History Center is well worth the 10-dollar price of admission–but I’ll have more on all that later, throughout the week. Another memorable part of my trip was the food. Being the fat fuck that I am, you know I was going to chow down on this trip!
For example, this was my breakfast on Saturday morning, courtesy of local institution Primanti Bros:
Good thing I didn’t grab anything at the airport beforehand, eh?
(Oh, and the title of this post is a Dream Death reference, in case you missed my write-up on Journey Into Mystery below. There’s nothing dead about the Steel City as far as I can tell…)
Pittsburgh’s not exactly a dream destination, but… Dream Death!
Looking back at the past few years, this is usually around the time I head down to the States for a gig or two. While we don’t have too many tours coming through Canada in the wintertime, not all bands avoid touring the US this time of year. Hey, I’ve been to Cleveland in January (2010) and Buffalo in February (2009), and it’s not any warmer there than it would be north of the border, but I digress. This year, I’ll be making my first visit to America at the end of April, and heading a bit further south than usual–to the new hippest city in the states, Pittsburgh, PA.
What’s the occasion, you ask? Well, the World Champion St. Louis Cardinals are in town, winners of that exciting October series last year. I actually do have tickets for the Sunday matinee, but without Pujols I don’t expect the Cards to contend, though they should still be able to beat the Pirates. That said, I’m not heading down strictly for the game, nor for some tour date either, but rather a special one-off reunion gig from native sons Dream Death. Dream Whaaa?
These guys only released one official album some 25 years ago, but they were to sludge metal what Venom was to black and Possessed to death, in that they actually coined the term. In the liner notes of their posthumous collection of demos, Back from the Dead, frontman Brian Lawrence explains that he came up with it as a teenager when a friend was trying to describe his hatred of Black Sabbath(!?). Not sure how it came to be applied to a buncha bands from New Orleans a few years later, but there you go. Dream Death’s early demos were released on their own Sludge Judge Records, and a live bootleg of theirs later appeared with the title Pittsburgh Sludge Metal. It might not be what we’d consider sludge today, but Possessed didn’t really play death metal, either.
Mind you, Dream Death does have a couple things in common with those early sludge bands who welded the vitriol of hardcore onto downtuned doom. In their case, they leaned more heavily towards thrash, but with some devastatingly slow riffs dropped in for good measure. Their Journey Into Mystery LP goes for about 100 bucks online nowadays, while a more recent CD reissue, itself limited to 500 copies, can easily fetch 50-75. Suffice to say it’s somewhat of a collector’s item. After calling it a day, members of Dream Death would resurface as Pittsburgh doomsters Penance in the early 90′s, while drummer Mike Smail would also go on to play on Cathedral’s Forest of Equilibrium and Pentagram’s Show Em How albums. The reunited lineup features Lawrence, Smail, guitarist Terry Weston and bassist Richie Freund, who played on their final Ode to Sorrow demo.
The icing on this treat is that Argus, one of my favourite epic doom bands going, is the main supporting act. Incidentally, their frontman Butch Balich also sang in Penance, albeit in a different era than most of the Dream Death dudes. Still pretty sweet, though. Saw these guys in Cleveland a couple years back, and they put on a good show.
Alas, while it’s still a couple months away, I’ll be counting down the days till this one, that’s for sure.
Dream Death, Argus, Closer to Hell @ 31st St Pub, Pittsburgh, PA, Saturday, April 21st.
