Take A Walk: Blocks of Penn

I've been meaning to take more walks. I feel like I've neglected nice walks when there's nothing else to do. So I made a point to walk down to Target this past weekend along Penn. There had been a few things I wanted to capture on a list in the back of my mind. So, with the sun beginning to set, I took a walk.

Sun beating down on Gross Street.

If I had money to spend on such things, this map painting would be mine. Maybe one day.

Mural on the edge of the Quiet Storm.

A gallery on the side of a building.

Mental note: Take a glass blowing class.

30 Before 30: Exploring Carrie Furnace

Last Wednesday, Carrie, Corey and I took a bike ride out to the Carrie Furnace with some other cyclist adventurers. The group ride was part of BikeFest, which there are still plenty of awesome rides to do before it ends on August 19! (Like the Underwear Ride, which is tomorrow and which I am still trying to work up the courage to do.) This post will mostly be a photo-dump of the ride and the tour of Carrie Furnace. This was a seriously awesome event, so thank you to the organizers for giving me a chance to cross off another of my 30 Before 30 goals!

The ride started out at the Pump House at the Waterfront.

Away we go!

The weather? Perfect. 

Once we got to the site, ZeroFossil, who is working to outfit the Carrie Furnace with solar panels for sustainable energy, had a bike set up to power the blender that made us some tasty margaritas. Here I am giving it a go, but the seat was just a bit too high for me.

Because the thing you want to do before you walk around a dangerous and unstable site like the Carrie Furnace is drink some alcohol. Cheers!

This place was more massive than I ever imagined.

There was so much good graffiti.

Guerilla artists built this deer head at the site using materials found on site. This thing reminds me of the Enchanted Highway sculptures in North Dakota.

After the tour, we biked back to the Waterfront and had beers and food at Blue Dust in Homestead. It was an awesome night of biking, adventuring, and meeting new people. BikeFest has been filled with opportunities to do awesome things and meet awesome people; go out and ride around before it's over!

PGH Stuff and Things N'at: August 2012

Due to a combination of extreme discomfort (stupid poison ivy legs) and a return to high temps (stupid sweaty poison ivy legs), I feel like I haven't been able to do much fun stuff lately. The good news is the itchiness is gone! Now I just have to wait out the disappearance of these scabs and patches of dead skin (I know, sounds really cool, right?!), but I'm back to shorts, skirts, and dresses. Stupid work pants be damned! So, in lieu of a post dedicated to one thing, here's a post dedicated to five things. Stuff and things n'at. Enjoy!

Love Front Porch
This morning while I was eating breakfast (toad in the hole smothered in cheddar cheese) and drinking coffee, I was catching up on my Google Reader. One of the PopCity articles I had missed last week was about Love Front Porch, based in Homewood. Do yourself (and Vanessa German, creator of Love Front Porch) a favor and read the site's About Me section. Or, if you're more of a watcher than a reader, press play:

I was inspired to donate to Love Front Porch, and I hope you will be too. The amount of time I spend in Homewood is basically zero. When I first moved back to Pittsburgh, a friend suggested I take a route through the neighborhood from my apartment in Bloomfield over to Regent Square. I felt incredibly unsafe. After that first ride through Homewood - even what as probably a less dangerous section that borders Point Breeze - I have stuck to braving Penn Ave when I need to get over to that part of the East End. Here's the thing though: I want to spend time in Homewood. It's a neighborhood in our city with a rich past (the Carnegies had homes there), storied culture (John Edgar Wideman sets many of his novels on those streets and Billy Strayhorn moved his family there), and buildings I want to explore (the Homewood branch of the Carnegie Library and Victorian homes in need of some TLC).  But, because Homewood is a hotbed of violence, I stay away. I want to love Pittsburgh as a whole, not just the sum of the parts where I feel safe. I wish Vanessa German all the luck in the world with her project. And I hope it can bring a sense of calm and community to a neighborhood that is ailing.

Strata
Sometime in July, I saw these weird posters go up around Downtown. I was intrigued.

When I found out the project was of Bricolage's creation, that was all the mystery I needed solved before purchasing a pair of tickets. I'm not going to reveal much about Strata. I was specifically instructed not to on my visit. But, participating in this was one of the more unique things I have ever done in my life. My dad accompanied me and he not only enjoyed himself, but he had a completely different experience than me. Bricolage has undertaken a huge endeavor here, and they have succeeded. Do yourself a favor and get refitnessed before time's up. The production goes until September 1. Who knows when something this incredible and bizarre will pop up in Pittsburgh again.

The Calm After the Storm - Pittsburgh's Beautiful Sunset
If you're an Instagram user (follow me at everythingbetterpgh) and you have any Instagram friends who live in Pittsburgh, chances are they posted a picture of the sky from Sunday evening. We had a terrible day of rain and scary storms (which I was fortunate enough to get caught in on my bike!), but by 8 p.m., the rain had cleared and looking up was a treat. These photos: unedited.

Looking down Friendship from my corner on Gross Street.

East Liberty Presbyterian Church and The Highland Building

Happy Birthday, Andy Warhol!
Today would have been Andy Warhol's 84th birthday. While I was getting ready this morning, NPR aired a bit about it, and the unassuming cemetery in my hometown of Bethel Park where he is buried. Listen to the story here, and scroll down to watch a great time-lapse video that brings Warhol's grave to life over the course of two years.

Movin' On Up: To the 16th Floor of PPG One
Not going to lie about the rough string of ten days or so I just had to live through. Between the poison ivy, the anniversary of my mom's death, a bike accident, and two flats in four days, I was seriously down in the dumps. Add to that a crazy week of work, but not because of my day-to-day responsibilities. We packed up our offices in the Henry W. Oliver Building and bid farewell to the Daniel Burnham-designed mini-skyscraper and have said hello to PPG One, i.e. the glass castle that is so essential to Pittsburgh's skyline.

Sixteen floors up, with one of those baller window-walled offices is where you'll find me, Monday through Friday.

Now that the move is over, I am so happy. Walking into that building today, sitting at my desk and looking out the window at Pittsburgh, the Mon, the Smithfield Street Bridge, and the South Side Slopes... I feel like I won the office lottery. When I started with the law firm I work with, I didn't ever expect to a) have a job where I felt so challenged and engaged with my work (I had started off as the receptionist, but am now a writer/paralegal) or b) sit in an office that I truly think would make anyone jealous. I remember being a kid and visiting my dad at his office out in Robinson and thinking "Look how important he is with this office and this big window and wow!" (I was also OBSESSED with playing with the Xerox machine in his office; I was a weird kid.) Tomorrow, he's coming up to see my office and my window and I can't wait to show it off.

I feel like this move has been the 180-degree flip I needed in my grumpy overall mindset. I am excited about all the stuff and things n'at that are to come.

You Only Turn 29 Once, Pt. 2

The second half of my awesome Saturday birthday adventures was an incline ride and steak dinner atop Mount Washington.

We used a Groupon for our dinner, which kind of made it feel like it was free. Which was awesome.

But even more awesome was our table by the window. I mean, like right next to the window. Our reservation was for 8 p.m., which allowed a lovely view of the skyline during and early summer sunset. Pretty perfect way to eat a meal. (Especially one made of steak and potato.)

After dinner we convened with friends in their backyard for a fire, whiskey, and smores. At midnight, I was given high fives. I told the stories of my mom going into labor with me at Lacky's (or so I've been told) and about why my name is Allison Elisabeth. It was a fine way to end the night, and a finer way to ring in number 29.

I'm off to Boston for the weekend. In fact, I'm probably sitting at the gate for my flight right now, being all ridiculously early. (That's just how I do; I'd go crazy with anxiety otherwise.) The weekend after this I'm back to D.C. It's hard with weekends like these to accomplish as much Pittsburgh adventuring as I'd like, but next week I'll be starting a new little series that corresponds with one of my 30 Before 30 list items. So spend your weekend getting excited for that, while I spend mine celebrating the marriage of one of my first friends in Boston. Congrats, Erin and Dave!

My First Motorcycle Ride: Seeing the City a New Way

You may recall that I was going to make a concerted effort in April to do new things, and then keep a list of them so I wouldn't forget them at the end of the month. I wasn't wholly successful in meeting my goal, as I often wimped out and just went to new restaurants. But a wonderfully willing and motorcycle- owner friend name John helped me close out the month of April doing a new thing that I never actually thought I'd want to do.

I'm the sort that considers a motorcycle a death machine, but I've been trying to do more things that scare me or make me nervous lately. I trusted John to take good care of me and not let my last moments be the seconds before my head splattered on the pavement. And we made an adventure out of it. I picked four different outlooks in the North, West, South, and East and we figured out our routes on the go.

John wasted no time in getting me acclimated to going fast. We zipped down the 40th Street hill and across the bridge and onto 28. It was scary, but awesome. And I was immediately hooked. Our first outlook was the Troy Hill cemetery. Going up Troy Hill Road I could watch the skyline in the reflection of John's shiny helmet. The cemetery probably wasn't the best place we could have chosen, but if I have the opportunity to rope a cemetery visit into an adventure, I will.

From Troy Hill we got back onto a numbered road (here's the thing about not owning a car: I don't know anything about our highways - I just know they are numbered and fast and not safe for me to bike on) and flew across the West End Bridge to the West End Elliott Overlook. I don't think John had ever been there, so I was really excited to share of one my favorite outlooks.

Back down a hill we went, and then up Mount Washington we climbed. At the outlook we stopped at on Grandview Ave, we could already tell we were in for a amazing sunset. The PPG building was glowing and orange. The weather was so temperate and clear. We got back on the motorcycle and headed to our last destination.

I've only recently found out about this gem in Schenley Park, and it was a spectacular sunset to end our adventure with. We sat in the grass and watched the orange sky turn slowly into night.

We were nearly back in Bloomfield when I shouted to John and asked if we could go down Bigelow into the city. He obliged and that little addition to the end of the ride was definitely the most thrilling. I won't tell you how fast we were going, but know that the city was coming at us very very quickly. From the city we took Liberty back up to Winebiddle and hit nearly every greenlight until we got to Bloomfield proper.

I survived my first motorcycle ride. We celebrated at Brillobox.