Tuesday, May 22, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
Saddling up to this bar
By Scott Beveridge
PITTSBURGH, Pa. – Somewhere between a Johnny Cash tune and an acoustic version of Kenny Rogers' "The Gambler" over the speakers at a new Pittsburgh bar I take a liking to my barstool today like a herd of cattle looking for a shady place to rest.
Maybe it's the urban-sheik "cowgirl" bartender or the rustic lodge decor that brings me back to the Rowdy Buck, the newest in a string of bars on the Pittsburgh's South Side owned by two entrepreneurs whom have helped to reinvent this part of the city.
Most likely I return because I am drawn to this watering hole's novel approach to warming the belly.
"We're also going for the craft cocktail bar theme," the bartender explains while we discuss the place at 1325 E. Carson St., which, at first blush, seems better suited for a roughneck out to belt down a shot or six of rye whiskey than a dude looking to sip a fancy martini.
The interior is lined with log-shaped pine siding. The ceiling above the bar is appropriately covered in shave tree bark. Across the room a frame holds a Boy Scout uniform and camping gear not far from deer antlers hanging from two ceiling beams. On a shelf behind the bar rests a wonderful, handmade whirligig - a miniature wooden lumberjack frozen in time beside a row of three pine trees, unless, of course, a strong wind comes along and puts this gadget to work.
OK. I've heard of craft beer by now in this misunderstood city, where nearly 10 percent of beer drinkers are snobs and prefer more-flavorful brew crafted by independent breweries over that produced by big corporations. But the craft cocktail concept needs a bit of explanation by the knowledgeable mixologist behind the bar.
She says bar customers, today, are being lured to pre-Prohibition cocktails because of a recent trend introduced in New York and Chicago. Bartenders there are being greeted with accolades by adding such an odd ingredient as a splash of beet juice to the traditional gin martini.
My pal Dash Kaplan at Bocktown in nearby Robinson Township - last year's Pittsburgh Magazine bartender of the year - calls his version of that mixed drink the Pepper Beet-Tini. He concocts it with Absolut Peppar vodka with a garnish of a slice of pickled beet, spear of pickled asparagus and jalapeño stuffed olive. It doesn't get more creative than that behind the bar.
Give this guy a hoppy glass of India Pale Ale and I'm happy. And this establishment, which has yet to install a draft beer system, has plenty of bottles of craft beer to choose from.
The Rowdy Buck, which opened March 16, introduces its cocktail theme with an expensive absinthe fountain, which is planted in the center of the bar until it needs shielded from klutzy patrons.
The glass and silver fountain holds ice water to drip over a caramelized sugar cube balanced on a spoon over a glass to flavor one $17 shot of absinthe.
That's pretty fancy for a bar whose menu features little else than 11 hot dogs, vegetarian chili, beef stew and curried potato salad.
But hold your horses these are not your ordinary hot dogs.
One bears the name The Tokyo and it's topped with seaweed, radish and wasabi mayo - a recipe that is sure "to melt your kimono," the menu promises.
I select The Cobb Dog served with lettuce, tomato, avocado, bacon and crumbled blue cheese. The sandwich is pretty tasty, even though it's difficult to find the hot dog buried under all that dressing.
Between bites I giggle upon noticing a large frame beside the bar holding a cast of a bigfoot "footprint" beside a photograph of this elusive ape-like creature.
This bar owned Scott Kramer and Steve Zumoff oddly sits next door their Beehive, a great coffee shop that appeals to grungy artsy-types. These guys also own three other local bars, include the hoopy, trailer park-inspired Double Wide Grill, a restaurant that is about to open a second location in Cranberry Township, Pa.
All things combined, Pittsburgh is lucky to have these two cowpokes.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Polishing a Brownsville gem
Scott Beveridge
BROWNSVILLE, Pa. – It's always inspiring to see young people invest in the redevelopment of derelict buildings in the Mon Valley, where blight in downtown districts has become a common sight.
Mitch and Brianne Mitchell have taken on such a project in Brownsville, Pa., between raising two you children and making marks in their own careers. She's a college professor and runs the Brownsville Film Office, and her husband is a bail bondsman, attorney and publisher of a local online newspaper.
"My husband has such a passion for Brownsville," Brianne Mitchell said in March, while workers remodeled and restored the former Plaza Bakery at 121 Brownsville St, which the couple hopes to reopen next month as Mitchell's Cafe & Bakery.
"So we said, 'Yes. Go for it.'"
Going for it can be a lot easier than it sounds in these older municipalities, some of which inhibit reinvestment by taxing merchants on their sales. It's no wonder all the new retail has shown up in such nearby places as Rostraver Township, where that tax doesn't exist. Bureaucratic red tape also can make it costly and confusing for start-ups to apply for historic preservation tax credits in these towns, which rarely offer tax breaks for those who choose to invest in historic preservation.
So these reasons make it all that much more impressive that the Mitchells are taking the time to hire local people to help them by using eco-friendly products to remove paint from the glass and brick on their two-story brick building. They want to reinstall a decorative tin ceiling inside above the original white marble honeycomb tile floor, and also recreate the wooden lunch counter that used to be inside Brownsville Pharmacy.
They also plan to hire a soos chef to recreate family recipes.
And, there appears to be a lot of local buzz about the opening of this cafe, of which I can't wait to be among the first customers.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Andy Warhol, let's talk
By Scott Beveridge
BETHEL PARK, Pa. – Andy Warhol's otherwise plain tombstone stands out from the road wrapped in colorful paper and lined with bouquets of silk flowers, gifts left behind as more and more of his fans make pilgrimages to his grave.
Some visitors offer gifts of small plastic skulls while others come to dance or "talk" to the pop artist buried in St. John the Baptist Byzantine Catholic Church off Route 88 in Bethel Park.
"There is something significant going on here beyond Andy's grave," said Dave Olson, a retired art professor from Rostraver Township, while stopped by the grave today to play bagpipes for Warhol.
"They're paying homage, satisfying their curiosity and people are having fun. We've danced on his grave, literally," said Olson, who taught at California University of Pennsylvania.
He's been coming here regularly for three years as part of a project named "Figments: Conversations with Andy," undertaken by Madelyn Roehrig, a program manager at Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.
As a personal endeavor, she stops by Warhol's grave every day as an obsession to document the site for films she produces, once of which aired recently on WQED in Pittsburgh. Warhol, who died Feb. 22, 1987, of complications from gallbladder surgery, is buried at the feet of the graves of his parents, Andrew and Julia Warhola.
"He's inspiring," Roehrig said. "He gives me something to do."
Tagging along with Roehrig is Travis Larchuk, an NPR journalist from Washington, D.C., who is creating a segment for a show on the graves of famous people and is much too shy to say anything to Warhol.
Aside from the gift of music, Olson has brought along a toy pistol he molded with rubber for Warhol.
"Knowing how much he hated gun violence It motivated me to make this rubber gun. It's much less dangerous," Olson said.
Roehrig said she likely will take home the gun and add it to her collection of weird things people leave behind at the grave. The oddest thing she retrieved from here is a small plastic penis, she said.
The family likely made the choice to mark the grave with a small, nondescript tombstone, Roehrig said.
"He liked ordinary things. I don't know," she said.
But, since April, Paul LeRoy "King of Art" Gehres of Millvale has been framing the grave marker with wrapping paper, first in shades of red and white, and now with stripes of blue, white and lime green.
"It's pretty ordinary, or it used to be. It's just what it needed," Roehrig said.
Scattered on the ground are plastic easter eggs and one playing card, a four and "a half" of hearts. Whatever that means. Atop the stone are three unopened Campbell's tomato soup cans, a can of chicken noodle soup, a 10-oz. bottle of Coca Cola and a golf ball.
At the graveside is a plastic folder, in which visitors leave behind letters to Warhol.
The most-recent one is written by Ellis, a 9-year-old who seeks the meaning of the wrapping paper. Ellis signed the note beside a drawing of a small red skull and crossbones.
Nearby the Siberian Iris are ready to bloom.
"There are a lot of references to what he did, who he interacted with," Olson said.
Sunday, April 22, 2012
"Bully" reminds us to talk about this problem
By Scott Beveridge
WEBSTER, Pa. – The school bully should have had a field day with a kid like me.
I was cross-eyed, had ears of corn growing out of my ears and didn't live in one of the "better" tree-lined neighborhoods in the Belle Vernon Area School District south of Pittsburgh during the 1960s and 1970s.
To say I was chubby would have been an understatement, having tipped the scale at 250 pounds in the 10th grade while standing less than 5 feet, 10 inches tall. I also was drawn to the arts, whose stereotypes need not be regurgitated to make a point.
But, surprisingly, I wasn't taunted or beat up by my classmates, and, why that never happened has remained a mystery to me to this day.
These thoughts about my childhood resurfaced today after I watched the troubling new documentary, "Bully," which has just about everyone talking about this subject.
My best guess as to why I escaped bullying as a child would involve my having had the fortune of being among a grade of kids with decent parents and schoolteachers who had the skills to keep bullies within arm's reach.
While my parents lacked socioeconomic status, if nothing else, they paid attention to their children's lives. That, in itself, did a lot to scare off bullies.
Mom often drilled into my head one of her favorite sayings, "People only make fun of you because they are jealous of you."
And, if I mentioned a problem in school in which that advice didn't solve, she usually acted promptly to address the situation with administrators, often behind my back.
That said Belle Vernon did tend to ignore bullying problems. And the teachers there sometimes joined in the problem. I remember one junior high school teacher making fun of an overweight girl by adding syllables to her last name, and doing nothing when boys in his class would put two or three chairs behind her desk to suggest she needed more support when she sat down.
The older kids on my school bus were so mean en route home that, each day, they would snort loud oink sounds in chorus from the time one poor, short and round girl stood from her seat and until she exited the door to the street. That behavior sometimes motivated me leave the bus at the next stop and walk the long way home to get away from those abusers.
The jealousy issue didn't seem to apply to her, or appear to have involved the boy who is repeatedly abused on his school bus in "Bully."
It broke my heart to see the assistant principal in this documentary react to one bullying case by blaming the victim and another by attempting to intimidate a boy's parents who complained about him being repeatedly roughed up on the bus. If nothing else that school administrator needs to immediately be enrolled in anti-bullying training.
It also bothered me that some critics of "Bully," including Roger Ebert, have criticized its director Lee Hirsch for not offering in the documentary any solutions to the problem.
The reviewers are wrong, if for no other reason, than this movie reminds us that we really need to discuss this problem. A lot.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
The iconic Fiesta dinnerware isn't just for the table
By Liz Rogers
NEWELL, W.Va. – Handpainted on a Sunflower Fiesta dinner plate perched high atop a shelf in the Homer Laughlin China Co. museum: "Jill, will you marry me? Jim."
And you thought the iconic Art Deco ware was just for serving up some meat and potatoes.
For the past 75 years, the vibrant hues of Fiesta have been part of kitchen table settings everywhere. Vivid colors bearing names of Scarlet, Plum Shamrock, Lemongrass and Paprika have helped to make Fiesta the most collected china in the United States.
And, it's made in the United States, in the northern panhandle of West Virginia. In fact, an easy hour's drive from Washington.
"That's part of the appeal of Fiesta," said Dave Conley, director of Homer Laughlin China's retail sales and marketing. "This is the only thing they can find anymore made in the U.S."
Another selling point: It's lead free, and says so on the product line's back stamp, he added.
Nestled along the banks of the Ohio River, the pottery put the tiny town of Newell on the map – literally.
Founded in 1871 in East Liverpool, Ohio, by Homer and Shakespeare Laughlin, the company's steady growth led to its move to an undeveloped tract of land across the river in West Virginia. Utilities were installed, a suspension bridge built and a trolley line created to transport pottery workers over the Ohio. Newell was established in 1905, and the new Homer Laughlin plant became the largest of its kind in the world at the time.
As demand for the pottery grew, more plants were built, and in the mid-1920s, the company hired English potter Frederick Hurton Rhead. Rhead created glazes in colors of red, blue, green, yellow and old ivory, deviating from the traditional white. Plus, a concentric circle design was imprinted on each piece, lending to the appearance of pottery handcrafted on a wheel. Fiesta became Rhead's legacy.
To date, Fiesta has launched 42 colors, and 15 remain in production. Each year, a color is retired and a new one introduced. Evergreen retired in 2010, and Chocolate is about to follow suit, ending production in March. The 2012 color will be announced at the International Trade Show in Chicago in March.
And the most popular color of all?
"Scarlet," says Conley without hesitation. Introduced in 2004, the color is the runaway favorite with collectors. The original Fiesta red was not a true red, he added, but more of an orange.
"For years, we couldn't do red," he explained. The pigments could not withstand the 2,300-degree firing temperature without burning out the color.
And the high temperature is necessary to ensure the product's durability.
The least popular color was Pearl Gray, which was produced for only two years.
Fiesta was taken out of production from 1973 until 1985, when Fiesta was reintroduced with lead-free glazes and vitrified china in five updated colors: White, Black, Rose, Apricot and Cobalt Blue.
Over the years, the company changed hands, and today is owned and operated by Joe Wells III, and his sisters Jean Wickes and Elizabeth McIlvaine, the fourth generation of the Wells family to run Homer Laughlin.
The company employs 965 people, most of whom are second- third-fourth-and fifth-generation employees.
The factory is open for tours twice daily by appointment, and is well worth the drive.
Barb Watson, who spent 30 of her 48 years with the company as a "handler" – someone who attaches handles to cups – came out of retirement to conduct the tours. She's familiar with every nook and cranny of the sprawling factory and knows everyone by name.
She proudly tours a visitor through the factory in late December, starting at the end of the production line and working her way to the beginning, where rolls of clay are cut and molded into the familiar shapes of Fiesta.
Among tour highlights: watching bowls move along a conveyor through a spray of glaze; artisans applying decals on plates and hand-painting gold trim on cups, and the imposing 350-foot-long main kiln, which bakes china at a blistering 2,300 degrees for eight hours.
The tour ends in the Homer Laughlin China museum, which features pieces of china manufactured throughout the company's history.
Also on display is a commemorative bowl marking the company's production of its 500 millionth piece of china in 1997. Only 500 pieces were produced, and the remainder was presented to dignitaries, the governor of West Virginia and the Smithsonian. Fifteen were donated to charities for auction, fetching an average of $5,200 apiece.
This year, in honor of the 75th anniversary of Fiesta, a special tureen and platter in this year's anniversary color, Marigold, are being produced. The 75-week production ends in November, or when the company reaches 10,000 pieces, whichever comes first.
The adjacent retail store features open stock of Fiesta, but the biggest draw is the seconds room, where pieces containing imperfections in glaze or color are sold at reduced prices.
Collectors look forward to the company's twice annual tent sales, held in June and October in the outlet store parking lot at the factory.
"The day it opens, we have 400 people standing in line waiting to get in. It's like Black Friday. They think they are getting something no one else is going to get," Conley says with a chuckle.
As for the plate bearing the marriage proposal?
"She said 'yes,'" Watson said.
For factory tour appointments, call 800-452-4462.
(Liz Rogers is editor of the Observer-Reporter in Washington, Pa. This story first appeared in the January/February issued of newpaper's Living Washington County magazine)
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