Hello, He Must Be Going

First Steve Leeper leaped onto a plane bound for Cincinnati. Now, Mulugetta Birru, executive director of the Pittsburgh Urban Redevelopment Authority, is bound for Motown:

Birru, the executive director of the city's Urban Redevelopment Authority, has been hired to head the newly created nonprofit Wayne County Economic Development Corp., which will raise private funding to spur construction and renovation in the Detroit area.

Birru says he wasn't looking to leave Pittsburgh, but was recruited by a headhunter. He insists that his decision to leave isn't related to the city's current financial problems --- which many people believe were only exacerbated by the massive interest-free loans and outright grants and public subsidies for the redevelopment programs that Birru shepherded.

While the timing of both Leeper and Birru's departures may be nothing more than coincidence, it's hard not to think that they both realized that the days of freewheeling spending on public projects like stadiums and convention centers (and department stores where most Pittsburghers can't or won't shop) are over.

According to Andrew Conte in the Trib, Jake Haulk of the Allegheny Institute thinks so, too: "They're doing whatever they possibly can to get out of here before the city goes bankrupt," Haulk said. "They're getting out of here while the getting is good."

Oh, yes, and the failure of the Lazarus and Lord & Taylor projects? Well, that's your fault, dear reader. Birru didn't miss an opportunity to take a few swipes at the local peasants on his way out the door.

Writes Mark Belko in the P-G, "As for using public subsidies to spur development, Birru said it is a fact of life if Pittsburgh is to compete against other cities. He said critics of that approach 'are not helping, they are hurting Pittsburgh.' 'They are from a different planet as far as I'm concerned,' he said."

I have incredibly mixed emotions about the Downtown Pittsburgh revitalization efforts of the last several years. It's very difficult for me to look at the Allegheny River waterfront --- the new stadiums, the reconstructed David L. Lawrence Convention Center, the rebirth of Fort Duquesne Boulevard, the Renaissance hotel at the old Fulton building --- and not think it's all a vast improvement.

On the other hand, the cost of all of these projects was insanely high, and according to the Act 47 recovery commission, the city is paying almost a quarter of its revenue out for debt service.

And with it increasingly likely that the county is going to merge some or all services with the City of Pittsburgh, that debt service is ultimately going to be partially paid off by taxpayers in the Mon-Yough area and elsewhere.

Well, so long anyway, Dr. Birru. Good luck in Detroit. From what I've seen of the Motor City, you're going to need all of the luck you can get.

Locally, although St. Edward's in Herminie and St. Clare of Assisi in Clairton are both closing their doors after this school year, St. Michael's in Elizabeth is gearing up for its 50th anniversary, according to Jennifer Vertullo in The Daily News.

Another school district is planning a tax increase, according to the Melissa Spangler in the News; and this one's a whopper. South Allegheny School Directors by a 6-3 vote approved a preliminary budget with an 8.13 mill property tax increase. The school district estimates that would cost the average homeowner about $400 more in taxes per year.

Finally, I can't think of any more useless Web site for you to visit --- with the exception of my own --- than this collection of petrol (gasoline) pumps from Edinburgh, Scotland in the 1980s.

Don't ask how I stumbled onto it, just go gawk, and have a safe Memorial Day weekend.

Firefighters, EMTs Speak Out at HoopieWorld

I can't help it --- I admire firefighters, especially the volunteer smoke-divers, who risk their lives for no pay, roust themselves out of bed in the middle of the night to douse car fires, and spend most of their free time raising money to purchase necessary equipment. Some of the nicest people I met as a reporter were volunteer firefighters (and I met a few real heels, too, but that's life).

Last year, I discovered a Web site called "Hoopie World," where firefighters --- and EMTs, police officers and emergency dispatchers --- from the North Hills and Airport Area are getting together to swap stories and advice. It also has a section discussing recent emergencies, including photos.

If you're an emergency responder, you'll get a kick out of it. If you're a civilian, maybe it will make you appreciate the first responders in your neighborhood a little bit more. (I'm not so sure about the name ... I thought "hoopies" were from West Virginia, but that shows what I know.)

Now, "Hoopie World" has spawned "MonYoughFire.com" to serve the Mon-Yough valley area. MonYoughFire also includes contact names, addresses and Web site URLs for fire and rescue companies in the Mon Valley, South Hills, Washington County and Fayette County, and the Webmasters are seeking information from companies in Westmoreland County and the Monroeville area.

What a great resource! If I was wearing a hat today, I'd doff it.

In the P-G, Mark Belko has a list of tips for summer travelers to remember before they attempt to pass through security at Pittsburgh International Airport:

Leave rolling pins, cleavers, box cutters, hammers, knives, pepper spray, mace, spatulas with serrated edges and other objects capable of inflicting damage at home. The TSA has confiscated many of those items, including a rolling pin and a meat cleaver, at the checkpoint over the past few months, despite repeated publicity about what is and isn't allowed aboard airplanes and simple common sense.

Um, a rolling pin? Apparently Mama Katzenjammer and the kids were taking a trip.

Since I know some people rely on this site for their recommended daily allowance of useless nonsense, here's something definitely useless and nonsensical: Someone in Hickory, N.C., has created a Web site for a fictional Edsel dealership, complete with sales information, prices, options, TV and radio commercials and more.

You can also find "dealers" in your area --- or at least a list of Edsel dealers as they existed in 1958. The site lists Baron Edsel Inc. at 414 State St. in Clairton (currently a garage with apartments above); John P. Mooney Company, 2409 Fifth Ave. at Hartman Street in McKeesport (currently the location of a car wash); Jonnet Edsel Sales at 4000 William Penn Highway in Monroeville; and Kuban Edsel at 850-854 Forest Ave. in West Homestead.

P.S. Thank you to everyone who sent emails or called me Wednesday to offer your support. You know who you are, and I appreciate the sentiments.

Gee, Guys, I'm Flattered

UPDATED ON MAY 27, 2004: I originally had a long rant up here. I've decided it was too long (Lord knows, I've never been accused of brevity) and out of character for this Web page, which I try to keep lighthearted. I'm not interested in settling scores here; I want to move on with my life.

Everyone who wanted to see what I wrote about that media gossip board has already read my rant anyway. If you really want to see it, email me, and I'll send it to you.

No, no one told me to take the rant down. I've just decided to take the high road, unlike the anonymous nitwits at the media gossip board.

So, in brief:

1.) No, I've never been fired from any newspaper job. I've never been asked to resign, either. In fact, I was asked to stay an extra week when I resigned from the Tribune-Review (it was just after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and they were shorthanded), and was also asked if I would reconsider my resignation. Anyone who says I was "fired" is a liar, stupid or both.

2.) As anyone can see from my resume, which is posted elsewhere on this Web site, I stayed about a year-and-a-half at the Observer-Reporter, a year at the McKeesport Daily News, and less than four years at the Tribune-Review. For someone in newspapering --- where the only career advancement comes from changing jobs --- that's hardly jobhopping. If I had something to hide, I sure as hell wouldn't have my resume public.

3.) I've been recruited to every newspaper job I had. And each job came with more responsibility and more money. Obviously, I wasn't too crappy or lazy.

4.) After a few months, I decided I wasn't a good fit for the Beaver County Times, and that I had outgrown newspapering. I decided to return to my previous job, where I hope to stay for a long time, Lord willing, if they'll have me. I left the Times amicably --- very amicably. There was even talk of my stringing or freelancing for them, which didn't work out.

5.) I don't post anonymous comments in chat rooms. If I have something to say, I write it here, and I have the guts to sign my name.

6.) I am still the king of all Pittsburgh media. In my sick, warped fantasy world, that is. And apparently, in the sick, warped fantasy worlds of people with too much time on their hands.

Ha! I got that down to 400 words!

Real Estate Market Picking Up Steam?

A friend and mentor passed away last year, and I've gradually been helping his widow sort through his things. The last time I visited with her, about a month ago, she told me she had decided to sell their house in White Oak and move into an apartment.

Over the weekend, I stopped out to see her again, only to see that the "for sale" sign was gone, and an unfamiliar truck was in the driveway. I cruised past the house to a nearby fast-food restaurant and tried calling her on the phone --- it was disconnected, but the computerized voice gave me the new number, so I called it.

Her house sold in three weeks --- and at the price she was asking for it. Selling the house was the easy part, she said; parting with the memories was harder.

Another friend just bought a house near Verona. It took three tries, he said. The first two houses he was interested in were sold just before he made his offers, and sellers aren't willing to negotiate.

I've been looking for a house since Christmas. My budget allows for an upended refrigerator box under a bridge, or perhaps an abandoned Serro Scotty trailer.

Well, I'm exaggerating (but not much). I can swing a real structure with floors, walls, roof, flush commode, etc. But after years of stagnating, real estate in the Mon-Yough area and East Hills has suddenly taken off. Like my friend, I've had two houses sold just before I made offers, and others that were sold within two weeks.

In one case, the sign went up in the front yard, I was interested in the house, I called my agent the next day, she called the selling agent --- and the house was already off the market.

According to my agent, home buyers are panicking because they're afraid that interest rates are going to go up, so they're buying houses quickly, no questions asked. She's getting worried because her agency, which is a small, locally-owned independent, is running out of houses to sell. "We're drying up the market," she says.

It's one of those good news, bad news scenarios: It's nice to be able to move your inventory as soon as you get it, but if you don't have any new inventory, you risk driving away new business.

All of this anecdotal information contradicts stories that I've read that claim that housing sales in the Pittsburgh metro area are slow. But as that great philosopher Chico Marx once said, who are you going to believe? Me, or your own eyes?

Anyway, I know I'm a pain in the neck to my agent, and her commission on any hovel I buy is likely to be minimal because of my price range, which goes from "diddley" right up to "squat." I've made offers on two houses. One seller refused to negotiate, even though the seller was asking $20,000 more than the house was assessed at ... and the neighbors appeared to be using their backyard as a landfill ... and the graffiti taggers were having a field day on the apartment building in the next block.

The second seller accepted my offer, but the house failed --- bombed, is more like it --- the home inspection. It wasn't so much the shower nozzle that had never been connected and fell out of the wall, or the plumbing leaks that turned the basement into a car wash as soon as the water was turned on, or the shiny new fuse panel that hid wiring that had been done with bread twisty-ties and wire coat hangers. It wasn't even the electrical outlets upstairs that turned out not to be connected to anything.

Maybe it was the freshly-painted furnace that turned out to be hiding a completely rusted heat exchanger; or the flimsy plywood panel in the basement that, when pulled back, revealed a room full of standing water and black mold; and, maybe, just maybe, I decided I wanted out of the sale when I learned the fireplace upstairs was vented into the living room, sending carbon monoxide to "nighty-night" levels when it was turned on.

Like I said, I'm a picky so-and-so. I'm still hopeful that I'll have something in the Mon Valley, in my price range, by the Fourth of July. If worse comes to worse, Dom's TV claims they can make me a great deal on a refrigerator box with wall-to-wall Styrofoam.

SPEEDTRAP WARNING: If you take the famous McKeesport-to-Pittsburgh shortcut via Lincoln Place and Second Avenue, beware. City of Pittsburgh police are on the prowl this week. Yesterday during morning rush hour, I saw two motorcycle cops on Irvine Street tagging cars for speeding, one after the other.

During the afternoon rush, there were six cops on Irvine Street --- two clocking speeders and the rest writing tickets; they had even set up a little pull-off area on the side of the road to aid the work. This morning, I saw two motorcycle cops on Mifflin Road writing tickets.

It's like shooting fish in a barrel. The speed limit on most of the stretch between Buttermilk Hollow Road and the Hot Metal Bridge is 25 mph, but the roads are clear and free of traffic, so cars tend to travel at 40 mph or more.

You better resist the temptation this week, unless you want to help Mayor Smurphy reduce Pittsburgh's budget deficit.

Mon Valley Docs Prepare for Cholesterol Overload

I was driving out on Lincoln Way through White Oak on Saturday afternoon and saw something that almost made me wreck the car.

Above the door to the old Luciano's Pizzeria (aka "Dogs & Suds," and some unknown diner before that) was a banner: "Coming Soon Vincent's Pizza Park."

Holy Sweet Jumping Jebus, we'll be able to get Vinnie Pies in White Oak. No more driving over to North Braddock (home of the original Vinnie's) or to Irwin (a Vinnie-approved annex). My arteries clogged a little bit just at the thought of it.

Have you ever had a Vinnie Pie from the original Vincent's on Ardmore Boulevard at the East Pittsburgh overpass? It's a dank, worn-out old building with greasy windows and a thin layer of flour coating the walls and floors. There are two rooms --- a "family" dining room and take-out counter in the front and a rundown bar and lounge section in the back. (They've removed the dusty plastic grapes that used to hang from the ceiling over the bar.)

So the "atmosphere" is lacking. Who cares? In the kitchen, they make the most incredible pizzas ... super-thin crusts with a shmear of sweet tomato sauce and blistered with burnt gobs of cheese that slide from the pie on an ocean of ooze. It's not a taste that people are neutral about; you either love Vinnie Pie, or you hate it. The Vinnie Pie lovers --- and I feel fortunate to count myself among them --- outnumber the haters. People in the East Hills have been eating Vinnie Pie for more than 50 years: That's three generations of pizza eaters who have been spoiled for lesser pies.

The "Vincent's" pizza sold at PNC Park is decidedly not real Vinnie Pie, and in fact, was the subject of a lawsuit between Vincent's Pizza Park and Vincent's Pizza Pub of Green Tree, which is not related. Now, I don't want to put the knock on Vincent's of Green Tree, which may make wonderful pizza, for all I know ... but it ain't Vinnie Pie.

White Oak will have two of the best pizza joints in Western Pennsylvania --- Luciano's and Vinnie's. That hardly seems fair to people who don't live in the Mon-Yough area, does it?

See why I stay in McKeesport? Sooner or later, everything gets there.

Random Acts of Writing

More things I found on the Internet while looking for other things:

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Ever wonder whatever happened to the cast of the '70s TV show "Alice"? No? Well, me neither. But if you have absolutely nothing better to do with your time, mosey on over to The Mel's Diner Homepage, which includes video, audio and scripts from the show, which ran from 1976 to 1985. (Warning: This is a "GeoCities" Web site, and it seems to be down fairly frequently, like most "GeoCities" Web sites.)

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Now, if you're a real movie fanatic, you'll know that the sitcom "Alice" was based on the decidedly non-comedic (and sometimes violent) 1975 Martin Scorcese movie "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore," starring Ellen Burstyn. The only character to make the transition to the TV show was Vic "Mel" Tayback. How's that for some useless trivia?

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If you're like me, and I pray to God that you aren't, you've seen "The Blues Brothers" so many times that you can mouth the dialogue. Maybe you even like cop cars like the '74 Dodge Monaco that Aykroyd and Belushi trashed in the film.

Maybe, like me, you need a life. Nevertheless, there's a thriving community of cop car buffs out there --- many of them aren't even rapists, perverts and cop impersonators --- who get a kick out of Web sites like Dave Arnold's Copcar.com.

My personal preference is for those big, ugly, extremely fast Chrysler cop cars of the 1970s, like this one. (Remember Aykroyd's speech --- "It's got a cop motor, 440 cubic inch plant. Cop tires, cop brakes, cop suspension." Etc.) I'm not sure what's to blame for this fondness: Poor early toilet training, perhaps, or maybe my mother was scared by a Plymouth Gran Fury before I was born?

And if you are wondering if the Dodge might end up restored as a cop car, well, let's just say the idea has been discussed.

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Joe Hardy, the multi-millionaire founder of 84 Lumber and a Fayette County commissioner, was the subject of a profile in Pitt Magazine last month. Did you know he's the grandson of the "Hardy" who co-founded Hardy & Hayes Jewelry? Me neither, until I read Robert Mendelson's story.

Hardy made news this week when he announced that he was purchasing 14-foot-tall statues of the Marquis de La Fayette --- for whom Fayette County was named --- and is installing them at all of the major entrances to the county.

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Feeling poorly? Some celery tonic will fix you right up.

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Trolley jollies can rejoice in this collection of information about Pittsburgh Railways. Bus buffs should proceed to the website of the Antique Motor Coach Association of Pennsylvania, whose collection of old transit artifacts is currently stored at the RIDC industrial park in McKeesport.

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Finally, our Western Pennsylvania blog directory has received a long overdue update. I've tried to make sure I've linked to at least those folks kind enough to link to this site. If I've missed anyone, please drop me a line and let me know.

Kennywood Still Rolling Along

One of the Mon-Yough valley's biggest assets --- no, not Sam's Superior Restaurant --- is the subject of a cover story in this week's City Paper. It's the (cue Andy Vettel Jr. voice) "One and Only ... ROLLER COASTER CAPITAL ... of the W-W-W-O-R-R-R-R-LD!"

Writer Mark Fatla also writes about a summer spent chasing coasters and eating deep-fried Oreos and other health foods at all of the amusement parks within a short drive of Western Pennsylvania, including the perpetually struggling Conneaut Lake Park and often-overlooked Waldameer Park in Erie.

But it's West Mifflin's sometimes rowdy neighbor that steals the spotlight:

Because it is so close, it is easy to take Kennywood for granted, but this is by all accounts one of the finest amusement parks in the world. Annually since 1987, it has been voted the favorite traditional park in surveys by the National Amusement Park Historical Association. It was featured and unabashedly praised in the book Roller Coaster by David Bennett. It is one of only two amusement parks listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is home to four of the most historically significant coasters in the world.

Want an anecdote to back that up? Well, all right. Last Saturday night, I was having a beer in a bar and restaurant called Taggart's in Troy, Ohio, population 22,000, and 266 miles from West Mifflin. My ham radio buddy was wearing a jacket with Kennywood's logo, and our waitress let out a short cry of surprise when she saw it.

"Oh, my gosh!" she said. "I was at Kennywood last summer! I love Kennywood!"

Turns out that she and her family are roller coaster buffs, and Kennywood is one of their favorite parks.

Put that in your water slides and smoke it, Cedar Point.

In other news, the former owner of Keyes Market on Evans Avenue died May 11 at UPMC McKeesport hospital, according to an obit by Al Lowe in the Post-Gazette. John B. Keyes was 85.

Tomorrow is likely to be the last day for the fire station at Allegheny County Airport, the busy general aviation facility in West Mifflin. County officials want to close it to save money. West Mifflin officials have told the county that the borough's fire departments will not serve as the primary emergency response to the airport, which would leave "County" without full-time fire protection.

Another of the wrongful-dismissal court cases brought against Our Fair City during the tenure of former Mayor Wayne Kucich has been settled out of court, according to Jonathan Barnes in the Post-Gazette. Former public works department laborer William Franklin was awarded $40,000 in back pay. The lawsuit claimed Kucich fired Franklin for political reasons.

And finally, some nice news: the borough secretary in West Homestead, Elsie Fekety, is retiring after 25 years of service. She's the topic of a story by A.J. Caliendo in the Post-Gazette and a front page article in this week's Valley Mirror. Fekety was feted by borough officials at a luncheon last week, according to Jack Ruskin's story in the Mirror.

We're still looking for your Mon-Yough area speedtraps and shortcuts, local restaurant reviews, and for G.C. Murphy employees and former shoppers. Email us at j t 3 y at dementia dot o r g.

Soggy Researchers Unravel a Driving Problem

Researchers at the Tube City Online Laboratory are working on the solution to a problem that has vexed Western Pennsylvanians since the early 1900s.

Namely, why can't people in Western Pennsylvania drive in the rain?

(Later, they'll start work on the questions of why can't Western Pennsylvanians drive on days that are snowy, overcast, foggy, sunny, partly cloudy, etc. However, traffic engineers at Tube City Online are fond of citing the old Chinese proverb: "A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single blown horn and middle-finger-out-the-window.")

An exhaustive survey of climatological data for McKeesport and vicinity by the TCO staff, conducted from a bar stool, has determined that on any given day, there is a 30 percent chance of precipitation.

Weighing heavily into this calculation was the realization that the weather forecast for any given day in the Pittsburgh region includes the phrase "a chance of showers or thunderstorms," unless the forecast is being done by Joe DeNardo, in which case, the operative phrase is "We might see a brief shawr."

In the interests of accuracy, the Tube City Online Quality Assurance Department (motto: "We put the 'P-U' in pure") has asked the Laboratory Staff to acknowledge that there is a 67.1 percent chance that all of these statistics are made up.

In any event, it would seem logical that --- given the high probabilty of rain in Western Pennsylvania --- Western Pennsylvanians would be prepared for this rain, and would know how to drive in said rain. And yet, according to a traffic study conducted by the Laboratories, motor vehicle speeds during any type of rain --- ranging from sporadic drizzle to heavy downpours --- can reduce traffic speeds measurably.

At first, our Laboratory researchers assumed that Western Pennsylvanians were merely attempting to compensate for the reduced braking ability that wet roads can cause, along with reduced visibility that attends overcast skies and high humidity levels.

However, that theory was discarded once Laboratory staff realized that Western Pennsylvanians were driving as moronically as ever --- running red lights, failing to put on their turn signals until they begin to turn, and talking on cellular phones in heavy urban traffic. The Laboratory staff decided that Western Pennsylvania drivers obviously do not put a premium on the safety of themselves or their fellow drivers, and were not slowing down for that reason.

Some Laboratory researchers held out for the theory that because many Western Pennsylvania automobiles are held together with duct tape and Steelers bumper stickers, that they are physically prevented from going fast in the rain. The extra water, the researchers surmised, might weaken the adhesive, causing car parts to fall off at high speeds.

But during a recent rainy trip to Ohio --- which lacks state motor-vehicle safety inspections, and thus has some of the worst-looking automobiles the Laboratory staff has ever observed --- cars that appeared to be made mostly of garbage bags and duct tape were seen traveling at or above the posted speed limits.

One theory that continues to hold promise, in the opinions of Tube City Online's award-seeking research staff, is related to high median age of residents of Western Pennsylvania. The premise is this: Perhaps elderly drivers have difficulty driving in the rain, and a high percentage of older motorists forces the median traffic speed to drop during precipitous days.

Yet in the opinion of the scientists, the "elderly driver postulate" fails to account for the high proportion of young nitwits who also seem unable to navigate rainy weather in their tricked-out Honda Civics with neon-illuminated tailpipes; Chevy Cavaliers with stickers on the back windows of little boys grabbing their crotches; and Cadillac Escalades with chain-link license plate frames and gold spinning wheels.

In conclusion, the Tube City Online Laboratories have decided that further study of this phenomenon is necessary. Luckily for the researchers, they should have no trouble carrying out their observations given the high prevalence of rainy weather in Western Pennsylvania, along with a seemingly inexhaustible supply of dimbulb motorists. A grant application to further this research is pending with the Ford Foundation, and possibly with the Amoco Torch Club.

Another project being tackled by the Tube City Online Laboratories (Government and Public Affairs Division) includes local property tax reform. According to recent stories in the Post-Gazette and the Daily News, several school districts are considering tax increases, including West Mifflin, Gateway and Norwin.

The Norwin tax increase, in the opinion of TCO researchers, is particularly puzzling, because according to the Daily News' story:

[S]chool board members adopted a $46.5 preliminary budget for the 2004-05 school year. If approved, the new millage rate for district residents would rise to 59.55 mills.

TCO researchers are questioning why a budget of less than $47 requires a tax levy of 59.55 mills, unless there is an inordinate amount of tax-exempt property in North Huntingdon, Irwin and North Irwin.

Otherwise, TCO is prepared to fund the entire $46.50 budget of the Norwin School District for next year in exchange for the right to name the new elementary school in Shafton for the founder of Tube City Online, who is also the author of these commentaries.

It's unclear at this time how students at that building will react to attending "Jackass Elementary School."

Notice: This Blog Entry Was Made on a Manual Typewriter

Major computer problems prevent a long entry today, but I didn't want to disappoint you, our loyal readers. (Ha! Ha! That's funny, because you're used to being disappointed anyway!)

Instead of a long, thumbsucking column, let me just say that in yesterday's rant about Dayton, Ohio, I completely forgot to mention southern Ohio's complete, insane obsession with the arrival of the 17-year cicadas. The Cincinnati and Dayton papers were carrying full-page feature sections about "how to cope with cicadas" and the TV news, naturally, was in full-blown ACTION! I-TEAM! EYEWITNESS! FAST! LOCAL! LATE-BREAKING! mode. (It's the same breathless overkill that Pittsburgh TV stations reserve for snowstorms, or Steelers playoff tickets.)

Here's the Cinci Post (which, despite being a Scripps-Howard paper in Scripps-Howard's headquarters city, remains a depressing rag):

The hundreds of cicadas lining Kym Kelly's garage door have kept her on a frightened lockdown. Kelly, 40, a Wyoming hospital worker, has been so fearful of the invasion of winged visitors that she makes her son drive her car into and out of their garage. She'll only get into the vehicle once it's in a cicada-free zone. "I can't even tell you how afraid I am of them," Kelly told 24 other cicada-phobes Monday night at a workshop in Mount Auburn aimed at helping local residents cope with the arrival of more than a million of the insects.

Here's the Cincinnati Enquirer (a Gannett product, which means it's depressing by definition) trying desperately to put a fresh spin on the story:

The singing of the male cicada can create a positive buzz for Queen City businesses that embrace the alien-looking insects rather than shun them as uninvited guests. "Business owners who are entrepreneurial about their circumstances can make something out of this by making cicadas fun and using them as a promotional draw,'' said Jeff Rexhausen, associate director (of the University of Cincinnati's Economics Center for Education and Research).

So far, no one in southern Ohio has gone as far as this nitwit in Bloomington, Ind.:

A man who cooked and ate nearly 30 cicadas sought medical treatment after suffering a strong allergic reaction to the sauteed insects. The man showed up at a Bloomington clinic Thursday covered from head-to-toe in hives, and sheepishly told a doctor he'd caught and ate the cicadas after sauteing them in butter with crushed garlic and basil.

Cicadas last visited Western Pennsylvania in 1999, but local counties --- with the exception of Somerset --- will not be part of this swarm, reports Christie Campbell in the Observer-Reporter:

The 17-year cicada is emerging soon on the nation's East Coast. But those bugs are part of a larger brood, known as Brood X. In Western Pennsylvania and portions of Eastern Ohio and Northern West Virginia, it was Brood V that emerged in 1999. Brood V is not expected to return until 2016.

So don't let your guard down for a minute: Just when you think it's safe to go in the backyard, they'll return. In the meantime, stock up on garlic and basil.

Things to Do in Dayton When You're Damp

There's nothing like a three-day geekout to leave you feeling tired, sore and glad to be going back to work.

I've returned from my fourth-annual trip to Hamvention, billed as the largest amateur radio convention in North America, and I have no reason to doubt it's true. The preliminary estimate I heard put paid attendance at something like 27,000, but a steady, cold rain that started Friday night and lasted most of Saturday washed away some of the crowds.

It's partly a trade show where manufacturers from the U.S., Europe and Asia show off their newest radio products; partly a flea market where vendors deal in close out and used merchandise and other assorted "junk"; and mainly a chance for radio-minded propeller-heads to get together and shoot the bull. Pictures will follow on a separate page just as soon as I get them back from the drug store (I haven't joined the digital camera revolution yet).

This is now the fourth year in a row I've spent several days in Dayton, and I'm always struck by how down-in-the-mouth it seems. Dayton is the seat of Montgomery County, Ohio, which has a population of 565,000 --- while that's equivalent to Washington or Westmoreland counties, most of Montgomery's population is in the urbanized center, not spread out in rural suburbs. Dayton also has a federal courthouse and headquarters for several mid-sized public corporations.

There are bright spots --- Wright State University and the University of Dayton have nice campuses, and there are number of good museums, including exhibits devoted to the Wright Brothers.

But overall, the Dayton metro area has a look best described as late '70s shabby, including lots of buildings with mansard roofs and wood-shake shingles in various states of decay. The main highways are overgrown with weeds; piles of dirt, junk and grass clippings clog intersections.

Downtown Dayton has lots of abandoned, boarded-up buildings and empty storefronts, and there's a thriving red-light district with dirty bookstores and pawnshops not far from a high school and the county library.

The outlying areas aren't much better. Zoning regulations must be extremely lax; there are plenty of junky retail stores and tacky strip shopping malls in Dayton's residential neighborhoods, and a sometimes bizarre mix of businesses and houses. On one block --- which was largely typical --- I saw a gas station, two rundown ranch houses, a Waffle House restaurant and a fire station crammed next to one other.

The privately-run arena and convention center complex where Hamvention is held is, to put it flatly, a dump. It looks like it's been 20 years since parts of Hara Arena saw a paint brush; its parking lots and restrooms are a shambles, signage is poor to non-existent, and the interior is decorated with the same ugly vinyl tile and cheap wood paneling that grandpa used in his basement.

Perhaps this sense of decay and malaise in Dayton can be explained by economic reasons: Like the Mon Valley and Beaver Valley, Dayton was once an industrial powerhouse. Its major employers were several General Motors subsidiaries (Delco Electronics and Frigidaire among them), and I can only surmise that they were hit with heavy layoffs in the 1970s. The federal government is also a major employer --- namely at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base --- and it's possible that military budget-cutting has hurt Dayton.

I'm sure that Daytonians are proud of their city --- just like I'm proud and fiercely defensive of the Mon-Yough area and Our Fair City. But I also know that McKeesport, Duquesne, Homestead, et al, don't present a very nice face for outsiders. Too many weedy lots, too many rusty railings and lamp posts, too many abandoned storefronts and houses.

In fact, Dayton is best described as a very large McKeesport or Beaver Falls --- some very nice sections, some very seedy sections, and a large muddled middle that could go either way.

Like Downtown Pittsburgh, Downtown Dayton rolls up its sidewalks at night, unless you want entertainment that's less than legal. The exception appears to be East Fifth Street, which seems to be Dayton's equivalent of Pittsburgh's South Side --- live music, bars and head shops. And, of course, there's Dayton's new ballpark, home of a minor-league team, the Dayton Dragons --- but like PNC Park in Pittsburgh, this very attractive stadium has so far sparked precious little in the way of nearby business.

The weather on Hamvention weekend usually stinks, and this year was no exception, of course. Perhaps because every time I'm in Dayton, it's rainy and overcast, I have a skewed opinion of the city, but I doubt it. Our hotel was overbooked, so Saturday night we had to seek accommodations in the nearby town of Troy, Ohio --- roughly the same distance from Dayton as Washington, Pa. or Greensburg are from Pittsburgh.

And by comparison to Dayton (or even McKeesport, for that matter), Troy was bustling on Saturday night. Lots of restaurants and stores were open and lots of people were on the streets. We had a very nice meal at a place called Taggart's, near the Troy City Hall, and spent some time looking around town, which is clean and charming --- something like Ligonier. I can't think that the climate --- weather or business --- in Troy is that radically different from Dayton.

I know a guy from McKeesport has no business telling people in Dayton how to improve their city --- pot, meet kettle, and kettle, meet pot, I think you two are related? --- but here are some suggestions from a regular visitor who's seen a lot of urban decay:

1.) Sweep your streets and pull the weeds;

2.) Implement some common-sense building maintenance and zoning regulations;

3.) Chase the hookers and assorted other ne'er-do-wells out of downtown;

4.) Improve the godawful traffic lights and ridiculous traffic patterns.

Oh, and someone please convince the owners of Hara Arena to at least paint it, inside and out? And pave the parking lot?

And clean the, um, facilities: President Bush spoke at Hara Arena about a week before Hamvention --- some of the signs welcoming him to town were still in evidence.

I can only hope that the President didn't use the restrooms at Hara --- if he did, I recommend that the White House physician check him for hepatitis and tetanus immediately.

(By the way: None of my criticisms of Dayton's appearance can be extended to Dayton's people. They are, like most Midwesterners, very friendly and polite, and the club that runs Hamvention --- the Dayton Amateur Radio Association --- is aces in my book. They do a great job pulling the event together.)

Spam and Comments and Spam and Spam

Some housekeeping notes: I enjoy reading your comments, and thank you for sending them! I'd like this to remain a dialogue, not a monologue, and I don't mind being told when I'm full of soup.

However, unless many readers here are working for mortgage brokers, companies that do body-part enlargements, and offshore casinos, then I'm getting a lot of commercial junk posted into the comment pages. (It's a phenomenon called "comment spam" and it's become another mini-epidemic on the Internet.) I came back from vacation and found a whole new bunch of messages that I had to nuke.

For now, I am deleting the messages from pill peddlers, porn pushers and assorted other jackasses, and I am blocking their IP addresses. If you suddenly find yourself unable to post comments, you may unfortunately share an Internet service provider with one of the people I've blocked. Contact me off-list and I'll find a way to restore your ability to comment.

If I can't find a way to automatically filter the comment spam, then it may become more difficult to comment --- I will have to personally approve comments before they're posted. I hope it doesn't come to that.

A reminder that I don't want to censor anyone, but I'd like the comments to remain mostly clean in language, and please, refrain from personal attacks.

And naturally, commercial messages will be deleted immediately, and your IP address will be permanently blocked.

The Lighter Side: Waterfront Rant and Waxing Nostalgic

There's a lot of serious stuff in the world, and I was frankly hoping to avoid commenting on it, because I'm looking forward to a three-day weekend --- my first real "vacation" of any sort in almost a year. If you want to read the serious stuff, skip to the previous entry.

For everyone else: Now, more crap!

Somewhere, when the Waterfront in Homestead was being designed, I suspect that a bright traffic engineer told the developers, "Say, these entrances and exits aren't going to be sufficient to handle all of the cars and trucks that want to get in and out. You need to add some turning lanes and pay for new traffic lights. Maybe you need another ramp into the place, too."

I'm assuming that fine traffic engineer was immediately struck on the head by a falling satellite, and died on the spot, and that the Waterfront developers, stricken with grief, were never able to implement his or her suggestions.

Or maybe the developers pointed at the old Homestead train station and said, "Well, heck, people won't be driving here, they'll be riding the train!"

Yeah, right. Or maybe they realized that investing $400,000 in traffic improvements was $400,000 they couldn't put onto the balance sheet as profit; you'll notice that the roads at the Waterfront are already falling to pieces, proving that they didn't exactly overbuild the place to begin with.

Getting into and out of the Waterfront is always a nightmare, but it's been especially obnoxious this week because the Amity Street railroad crossing is closed for repairs. It was supposed to reopen Wednesday, but as best as I could tell last night, they haven't even started construction.

All of the traffic is either being funneled off of the High-Level Bridge (aka Homestead Grays Bridge) or on the old mill flyover ramp at the Munhall end of the complex --- which is not designed to handle the extra load. And all you need is some old fart --- which describes 75 percent of the drivers in the Mon Valley --- afraid to make a left turn off of Route 837, and traffic is backed up for blocks.

The Tube City Online traffic department recommends avoiding the Waterfront until the Norfolk Southern railroad gets off of its collective duff and fixes the crossing. Besides, the Waterfront is so crowded that nobody goes there anymore.

By the way, I had plenty of time while stuck in traffic on Route 837 yesterday to note that Nathan Bilder lumberyard, down in what we used to call "Munhall Junction" (or "Hunky Hollow") is up for sale. More about the Junction can be found in the newsletter of the Homestead & Mifflin Township Historical Society.

In other news, I've been wondering why Babe Charapp Ford in McKeesport has changed its name to "Pro Bowl Ford." David Whipkey answered my question in last night's Daily News: Because it's not owned by Babe Charapp any more. It's been sold to Otis Morris Jr., a Georgia native who played for the University of South Carolina, and who owns another dealership down South.

His business partners include a bunch of current and former football players, including Duce Staley of the Steelers.

Welcome to McKeesport, Mr. Morris! It's nice to see the local Ford agency staying in town. (It is staying in town, right?)

For you nostalgia buffs, the current Pro Bowl Ford traces its lineage to three longtime dealerships in Our Fair City. Before purchasing the Ford franchise, Babe Charapp was an executive at Paul Jones Dodge, which was located on Eden Park Boulevard at the current site of the S&S Taxi Co. garage.

The Ford agency in town was long held by Eger Motors, which was famous around the Mon Valley for dressing all of its salesmen in identical red sportscoats. Eger Motors was on Walnut Street downtown, in the building that currently houses Pozzuto & Sons Plumbing and Mon Valley Plumbing Supply; in an even more obscure bit of trivia, the same building (though heavily remodeled) was once a vaudeville house and movie theater called the Hippodrome.

I wonder how many longtime McKeesport residents can still sing the Eger Motors jingle, which used to run on WIXZ and other radio stations? "The redcoats save you greenbacks, the eager Eger way! So drive out to McKeesport, today!"

The building that houses Pro Bowl Ford was once (and will always remain, at least to me) "Devie's Chevyland" --- Deveraux Chevrolet. The Chevy agency moved there --- one of the first businesses to flee downtown McKeesport --- in the mid-1950s. Previously, it had been on Sixth Avenue behind the Penn-McKee Hotel; the building still stands and you can make out the faint letters "CHEVROLET" on its smokestack.

Deveraux had its own jingle: "Get a Chevie from Devie, Deveraux Chevrolet!" I could sing it, but I won't. I would, however, gladly pay someone if they have a copy of that jingle, or of the Eger Motors jingle. (I'd also love copies of "Get crackin' to McCracken," and "Say Bendik Olds," but then, I'm a little bit nuts that way.)

Finally, while looking on the Internet for something completely different, I ran across a story about a fellow who sounds like one of the all-time great characters of the Mon-Yough valley. Christy Walthour, an attorney from Manor, Pa., was the president of the tiny Manor National Bank in Westmoreland County for 56 years. Walthour died last August at the age of 86.

According to the September-October 2003 issue of The Sidebar, the newsletter of the Westmoreland Bar Association, Walthour prosecuted war criminals in Japan during World War II, including the general who was convicted of leading the Bataan death march.

Walthour, according to former colleagues Robert W. King and Wesley Long, writing in the Sidebar, never got over his hatred of the Japanese:

He would not buy a motor vehicle, camera, piece of office equipment or anything that was made in or had a component thereof made in Japan. If you ever frequented Christy's office, you would note that from a technological standpoint, the same came grinding to a halt in the mid-1970s.

His automobiles had to be of German manufacture and meet the following specifications: diesel engine, standard transmission, no power steering and no power brakes. He drove all of his automobiles until they broke in half --- literally --- and never in his lifetime did he wash a car.

Now that's the kind of tough, frugal so-and-so you want running your bank. Speaking of which, Walthour had another great dislike in life: Bank examiners, according to Long and King. At one point the government told the Manor National Bank it had "too much money ... The cash on hand was too close to a one-to-one ratio to the consumer deposits. Christy could never fathom why it was wrong to have too much money, so although he treated the examiners with respect ... he would argue with every single suggestion and criticism they would make."

And then there was the time that he pulled a gun on two police officers answering a burglar alarm at his house ... well, you'll just have to read the story. By the way, when Walthour died, he left $4 million to his alma mater, the Pitt law school --- on the grounds that not a dime be given to the athletic department.

A portion of Walthour's money will be used to endow two faculty chairs, while part of the rest will go to a scholarship fund. None of it will be spent on sports: Requiescat in pace, Mr. Walthour.

Co-Workers, Neighbors Remember Berg

I can't help passing along a few short items about Nick Berg, the eastern Pennsylvania native whose gruesome death at the hands of Iraqi radicals has made worldwide headlines. A memorial service is being planned for Friday in West Chester for Berg, according to his family's hometown paper, the Daily Local News:

"This is a kid, all his life, that had never disrespected anyone," said Bruce Hauser, the next-door neighbor who has served as the familyâs spokesman. "I would look forward to talking to this kid because he was just a great kid." ... Hauser described Berg as a down-to-earth young man who seemed most comfortable in "a tank top and shorts and a beat-up pair of tennis shoes." He was not flashy, Hauser added, attempting to dispel rumors that Berg traveled to Iraq in hopes of getting rich.

The local police say the scene outside the Bergs' suburban home has been a "media circus," and extra patrols are in place to handle traffic and noise complaints.

Meanwhile, on a broadcasters' mailing list to which I subscribe, a Philadelphia radio station engineer on Wednesday remembered Berg, who maintained radio towers:

Nick impressed me as a very bright, resourceful and dedicated individual who cared a great deal about improving our quality of life by applying his skills and knowledge. ... He had all sorts of ideas to bring technology to less-developed parts of the world. ...

Why did he go to Iraq? He was aware that some towers were damaged last year during bombing missions, and many more had been looted... copper lines removed, diagonal members taken out, etc. Few obstruction lighting systems were functional -- he mentioned an 800 foot tower two miles from an airport (used by our military) that was totally dark. So he first went over in December to see if he could help to assist in the reconstruction, restore Iraq's broadcast services, and repair the serious structural damage that endangered the lives of their citizens.

There's more about Nick Berg, including excerpts from email he sent back from Iraq, on that Web page.

In Which I Save Taxpayers $50 Million

It must be spring. The temperature is rising, the flowers are blooming and my hay fever is killing me.

And it must be an election year, because the politicians are handing out our money again and calling it progress.

How else to explain U.S. Senator Arlen Specter's plan to ask for $50 million in federal pork to supposedly improve two-way radio communication between Allegheny County's police and fire departments?

It's an unnecessary expenditure of money that's addressing a symptom rather than the problem. In fact, we at the Tube City Online Research and Development Department can fix the regional radio communications problem for much less than $50 million.

But first some background: This whole boondoggle was dreamed up in response to the kidnapping and murder of a young woman by her estranged boyfriend. The woman was spirited out of the City of Pittsburgh despite a police cordon; officers pursued the kidnapper fruitlessly out to Westmoreland County and back. At one point, police from different jurisdictions were reduced to calling emergency dispatchers on their cellular telephones because their radios aren't compatible.

Allegheny County Coroner Dr. Cyril Wecht has also planned an inquest to explore several issues that arose during the chase, including the radio problems.

Specter told local officials that he's going to try to dip into the homeland security honey pot and bring money back to buy them a new radio system to enable them to communicate.

To paraphrase Strother Martin in Cool Hand Luke: What we got here is a failure to communicate, all right. But it has nothing to do with radio equipment. Nor will $50 million of the taxpayers' money fix it. I'm not sure if this proposal to purchase $50 million in new radios in a callous attempt to cash in on the recent tragedy. I hope not. I prefer to think of it as technical ignorance by the political leaders proposing it, encouraged by the radio vendors who stand to cash in on lucrative equipment contracts.

First things first: There is no technical, legal or financial reason that each and every police and fire department in Allegheny County can't talk to one another right now. The FCC --- under lobbying by groups of emergency responders like the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials, or "APCO" --- has set aside a National Law Enforcement Emergency Channel (the "NLEEC") at 155.475 MHz, right smack dab in the middle of the very same radio band (155 MHz) that most Allegheny County police departments use.

Because municipal police agencies are non-profits, they could apply for use of that frequency at little or no cost. And because most modern police radios are programmable from a laptop computer, adding the new frequency can be done in less than an hour.

Even updating the older radios --- ones that aren't programmable --- isn't that much more difficult. It might require ordering a part from a radio vendor, but rest assured that adding a new channel to most of the police radios in Allegheny County would cost considerably less than $50 million. (Radios on different frequency bands --- like the high-band radios used in the City of Pittsburgh and the South Hills --- wouldn't be able to use the channel. Those departments would require either separate radios on the 155 MHz band, or cross-band equipment back at their dispatch points.)

Out west, most agencies seem to have the NLEEC, but as best as I can tell from looking at the FCC records, only Wilkinsburg and Penn Hills in eastern Allegheny County are licensed for it, along with the state police. Allegheny County emergency management also has a license for the NLEEC --- a license which could presumably be shared with all of the police and fire departments in the county.

Could all of the departments in Allegheny County start yacking on the NLEEC at the same time? No; it would be like a party line with everyone talking at once. But in emergency situations like last month's police chase, it would have been a damned nice convenience for the cops, and would have served their purposes.

No, not a convenience; that implies that it's a luxury item. It's a necessity. Without free-flowing communications, some police officer or innocent bystander could be killed in a chase like that.

Why don't the local police have the NLEEC in all of their radios? I'm assuming it's just a lack of awareness by the people who do their emergency equipment purchases --- local borough councilmen and township commissioners and supervisors. If there are any police officers or local officials reading this, and your radio vendor hasn't suggested that you have the NLEEC in your radio, then consider switching vendors.

(Fire departments need not feel left out; the FCC has national intercommunications channels for them, too, in both the 45 MHz and 154 MHz bands.)

Ambulance services have had this kind of interoperability for years; in my experience, they all use the same channels to ensure that they can talk to each other, and to the hospitals.

There's a bigger issue at work, of course. Several emergency officials at Specter's hearing mentioned the need for all of Allegheny County's more than 100 emergency agencies to talk to each other over the radio.

Over the radio? They need to talk to each other, period. One big problem about coordinating any emergency response in Allegheny County is the misbegotten patchwork of police departments and jurisdictions. Even that could be dealt with if all of the police departments were being dispatched by the same emergency operations center; but, of course, we still live in a county where towns like Munhall, and West Mifflin, and Homestead, and Turtle Creek, and Forest Hills, and North Braddock, and North Versailles Township, and a couple of dozen other communities are still operating emergency dispatching desks.

Call Allegheny County 911 from one of those towns, and you get bounced back down to the local dispatch center. Call the wrong town's center directly, and you're liable to have to hang up and dial another 10-digit number. And some of the dispatch centers refuse to talk to each other over the radio; they'll only share information by telephone. All of this can delay crucial data by several minutes.

There is no practical reason for this. The only reason to maintain all of these fiefdoms is because of petty intramural squabbling that has gone on for more than 100 years in some cases. Township A is mad at Borough B because in 1945, Borough B decided to purchase water from City C instead of Township A, so Township A refuses to cooperate on any projects with Borough B or City C. Township commissioners and borough councilmen play to their constituents by pledging to keep their towns "independent" and railing against any proposals to share services with neighboring towns: "I'm not sending your tax money over to those people in (Pitcairn, Wilmerding, Churchill, Chalfant, insert-your-hated-rival-here)."

The ultimate solution is to end all of the local dispatching --- and the state legislature should order it, if not the federal Homeland Security Department. Metropolitan areas many times larger than Pittsburgh (New York City and Los Angeles, to name two) cope with centralized emergency dispatch; in some western locals, entire states are dispatched by the same 911 center. Simply pass a law denying state law enforcement grants to any community in a second-class county (namely Allegheny) that isn't part of a regional or countywide emergency dispatch system. Problem solved.

In the short term, each of the departments should have the NLEEC. And, for good measure, each of the departments that serve the communities along the Parkway East should have the state police Troop B Moon Township barracks frequencies programmed into their police radios --- they can ask the radio maintenance person to do that when he or she adds the NLEEC frequency.

As for that $50 million in homeland security money you're looking to tap, may I make a modest suggestion, Senator Specter? Create a fund for police equipment, so that departments aren't forced to beg for donations to purchase ballistic vests.

Or invest it in a trust fund to help fund police pensions, and take some of the burden off of the boroughs and townships.

Or help out the volunteer firefighters and ambulance corps by creating an endowment for health and life insurance, or for scholarships for the sons and daughters of first responders.

Hell, offer cash payments to some of Allegheny County's 129 municipalities to settle their squabbles and merge their public safety services, or even their entire communities. Divided 129 ways, $50 million works out to better than $387,000 per town. Merging some of these local burgs out of existence will benefit the taxpayers more than purchasing some shiny new radios to play with.

Opinions at Everyday Low Prices

It's another light day, because the creative well has run dry. There were several interesting comments about the Wal-Mart column on Friday. Frankly, I realize I'm swimming upstream on this issue. There is no longer any argument, nor is there any real competition: Wal-Mart is calling the shots in retailing, and everyone else is either following Wal-Mart's lead, fighting over the scraps that Wal-Mart leaves behind, or preparing for their going out of business sales.

Wal-Mart is number one because consumers have learned (through hard experience) over the last 20 years that loyalty matters not at all in the world of business. Corporations outsource workers to save money; so if those same workers can save 10 cents on a can of beans, they do it. Most people care more about saving that 10 cents than they do about a loss of local identity or local products. Take this letter that ran in Friday's Greensburg Trib:

We need somewhere to shop in North Huntingdon; there is nothing here. Kohl's is fine for certain items, and the other little shops will survive, too. There is room for a Wal-Mart. ... All of us in North Huntingdon who are not rich would love to see Wal-Mart come in. All of the people who are fighting it will be shopping there, too, to save a buck!

Actually, it's a proven fact that the little shops won't and can't survive. The comment that there's "nothing" in North Huntingdon in the way of shopping is also funny; the last time I checked, Route 30 was lined on both sides with stores from the Westmoreland County line almost to Greensburg. There are also several large unused retail spaces in the township, including most of Norwin Shopping Center, which could lead one reasonably to assume that there are too many retail stores for the market, not a lack of places to shop.

Besides, there are Wal-Marts in three of the communities that border North Huntingdon: North Versailles, Delmont and Hempfield. The last thing North Huntingdon, Western Pennsylvania, or the Planet Earth "needs" is another Wal-Mart.

Except that, you know, we need to "save a buck!"

Give Wal-Mart credit: They have established a reputation, rightly or wrongly, as a place that always has the lowest price and the best value. The first assertion is sometimes true; the second is arguable. Some of what Wal-Mart sells --- especially the goods that are clearly labeled "Made Exclusively for Wal-Mart" --- are (in my opinion) actually watered down or oddly-sized versions of nationally-advertised brands; I would argue that they're of questionable value, even if their initial price is cheaper.

Other Wal-Mart items (again, in my opinion) are shoddily-made Chinese knockoffs of American products and don't have the same value as a similarly priced or more expensive item at Sears or a good hardware store.

Most people don't seem to care. I drive past the Wal-Mart in North Versailles on a regular basis: it's crowded almost 24 hours per day. And if you don't think Wal-Mart is hurting the "other little shops," then go take a look around the nearby Foodland and the very good hardware store in Great Valley Shopping Center. They're both suffering. So are the stores in Forest Hills Plaza.

Eventually, something is going to come along that knocks Wal-Mart out of the market, just as Wal-Mart knocked off K-Mart, Hills, Ames and dozens of regional discount chains. Or, Wal-Mart is going to get so large that it collapses from its own size. But I don't see either thing happening any time soon. Twenty years from now? Maybe. No one in 1983 thought K-Mart would be bankrupt in the year 2003.

There is also a slim chance that the American public will wise up and realize that buying from Wal-Mart is a sucker bet, but I'm not holding my breath.

Onto the good news from your neighborhood: A Mon-Yough valley resident, John A. Swanson, has been awarded the highest honor in engineering, the John Fritz Medal.

Awarded each year by the American Association of Engineering Societies, past recipients have included gasoline engine and refrigeration expert Charles F. Kettering; radio pioneer Guglielmo Marconi; AC electric power developer George Westinghouse; and telephone inventor Alexander Graham Bell.

Swanson, who lives near Elizabeth, earned his PhD in 1966 from the University of Pittsburgh and is the founder of Ansys, a software company based in Washington County. I would explain exactly why Swanson was honored, but I don't understand it myself (it has something to do with his development of advanced mathematical formulas that are used by computers to simulate engineering problems, and possibly with flying monkeys, for all I know).

Swanson has also given nearly $5 million to Pitt's School of Engineering to establish a product research and development center.

From the Tube City Almanac Media Watch Department comes the news that Men's Journal has chosen Pittsburgh as one of the top 10 places to live, along with San Diego, Portland, Ore., Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Austin, Texas.

Questions for class discussion: 1.) When magazines make lists of the "best" cities for anything, do you think those lists might be cynical attempts to attract publicity and boost newsstand sales in those cities? Explain your answer. 2.) Who really cares what Men's Journal or any other magazine thinks of Pittsburgh, Poughkeepsie or Perth Amboy, for that matter? Cite examples.

Finally, from the Tube City Almanac Business Desk, high-test unleaded gasoline is now $2.249 per gallon in Our Fair City, according to our exhaustive survey of three filling stations. Low-test gasoline is retailing for $1.939. The price leaped above the $2 mark on Sunday.

The powerful V-8 in the sleek, gray Mercury hiccups and knocks on low-test gasoline, but it's gonna be drinking it, for now, at least until I get that cold-fusion engine worked out. I think it needs more springs and gumbands ....

Briefly Noted

I won't write much today, because I don't have anything to say.

("That's never stopped him before," I can hear people muttering.)

Instead, I'll palm you off on other people who have nothing to say, but at least say it with style. James Lileks had some interesting musings on Mother's Day cards in the Minneapolis Strib:

There was one card at the store that gave me pause. You have several categories of Mother's Day cards: "From Husband," "From Grandparents," "From Distant Relative Hopeful for Inclusion in Will," "From Tax Assessor," etc. And this: "From the Dog." If you're giving a Mother's Day card from the dog, that would make Mom a b-

No, no. Family paper. But you get the idea.

Out in La-La Land, Rip Rense had a good column recently about "LTSEWH," or "Less-Than-Satisfying Encounters With Humanity," that I think we all can relate to:

I'm getting old, and I was raised in a quaint time when businesses were polite, and clerks thanked customers. Plus, well, I just don't like it when my superior half is treated rudely, especially by a sullen, pop culture-poisoned child. I had a brief fantasy of grabbing hold of Clerk's lip-ring, yanking him down to counter level, Clint Eastwood-like, and saying "Do you feel lucky, punk?" but instead settled for a speech.

If you don't mind strident leftism, Rip's most recent column is called "President Paranoia." Read it at your own risk.

I'm still collecting speedtraps and shortcuts for a new section of Tube City Online. If you can help, email me at j t 3 y at dementia dot org.

I was in Irwin over the weekend and saw that Irwin Bank & Trust is working on a major expansion of their home office, which proves that small businesses can compete under the right leadership. I haven't seen anything in the newspapers about the construction, which looks like it's going to double or triple the building's Main Street facade.

Finally, the Wal-Mart rant on Friday attracted some cogent comments, and yours are welcome. Googling for information on Sparkle Markets, IGA and other grocery chains led me to find the IGA Anthem, which is sappy, commercial late '80s drivel. It also reminds me of most of what passes for current country music. Which explains why I don't listen to current country music, come to think of it.

Food Fight Put the Sparkle Into Local Stores

A few weeks ago I noticed that the Scozio family had converted two of its local Shop 'n Save stores --- on Lowry Avenue in Jeannette and in Norwin Shopping Center in North Huntingdon Township --- to something called "Sparkle Markets."

"Sparkle" vaguely rang a bell with me as a chain that might have had some stores in the Pittsburgh area many years ago, and a quick Google search turned up the company's website. Sparkle is apparently a cooperative, a la IGA, that provides chain buying power and advertising support to independent grocers. The heaviest concentration of Sparkle stores seems to be in the Youngstown area.

The same search also turned up this 2003 story by Tim Schooley in the Pittsburgh Business Times that describes an ongoing battle between Shop 'n Save's parent company, SuperValu Inc., and the Scozios. The Scozios, who sued SuperValu last year in federal court, claim that SuperValu --- which also owns the Foodland trademark --- has unfairly opened corporate-owned supermarkets in direct competition with Scozio's franchised stores.

Further, the Scozios claim that SuperValu has misused advertising money that was supposed to be spent on behalf of the Shop 'n Save franchisees; and that SuperValu has threatened the Scozios' suppliers.

SuperValu, which declined comment in the Business Times story, denies the accusations.

The grocery business, which has always been fairly cut-throat, has become particularly nasty now that Wal-Mart has moved into food sales in a big way. According to the Post-Gazette, Wal-Mart went from less than 3 percent of the Pittsburgh grocery market to more than 15 percent in only two years.

Wal-Mart's food sales so far have come from the supermarket operations attached to its "Supercenter" discount stores, but now, Wal-Mart is getting ready to open stand-alone supermarkets --- called "Neighborhood Markets," one of the most ironic names ever devised --- designed to compete directly with Giant Eagle, Foodland, Shop 'n Save and others.

Meanwhile, North Huntingdon commissioners are making a last-ditch attempt at keeping a Wal-Mart Supercenter from being built at the Lincoln Hills Country Club near the Irwin exit of the turnpike. The township has put a number of stipulations on the development, most of them aimed at tying the development to improvements to congested Route 30. Wal-Mart has vowed to take the township to court.

The Tribune-Review's Greensburg edition summed the situation up thusly: "Converting 57 acres of idle farmland into commercial space and blacktop poses enormous ramifications. It is the responsibility of North Huntingdon's commissioners to stand up, to make sure local land-use laws are enforced, and to protect the public's interest -- even when the venue for arguments shifts from the municipal building to the courts."

I'm not anti-big business; large corporations make possible many of the things we take for granted --- cars, medication, jet travel, cheap personal computers, the list goes on and on. Dividends from corporate stocks help support pension plans and direct employment by large corporations is a major factor in a healthy economy.

But Wal-Mart is a particularly insidious corporation that has done as much harm as good, in my never-humble opinion. Allegations of abuse of workers by Wal-Mart are well-known, and the company faces scores of labor law complaints across the country. Wal-Mart has also used its buying power to threaten and bully its suppliers; a story in Fast Company recently described how Wal-Mart's desire to save money on large jars of pickles helped push Vlasic Foods into bankruptcy.

As for its grocery departments, take a stroll down the aisle and look closely at the items. Wal-Marts carry very few, if any, local dairy or produce products, so they compete directly with small farmers, buying instead from large multinationals that use cheap immigrant labor and factory farms. Even Wal-Mart's selection of national brands is limited. There are virtually no ethnic foods available; the products carried in Wal-Mart stores are chosen at the corporate headquarters.

In contrast, many Giant Eagle stores and some of the other chain stores are unionized and pay relatively good wages --- about $11.50 per hour at the top of the scale. Working conditions are hard, but fair. Giant Eagle, Foodland and Shop 'n Save support local suppliers like Bell-View Foods, Mancini Bread, Delallo's, Constantine Farms and others.

Oh, Wal-Mart may run ads bragging about the donations that it makes to charities, but Wal-Mart executives in Bentonville, Ark., don't care about supporting businesses in Allegheny and Westmoreland counties any more than they care about the potential traffic problems that they may cause on Route 30. They care about maximizing profits and their return to their shareholders.

You may decide that the only thing you care about is saving 15 cents on a box of Tide, or 50 cents on a bag of dog food, and if you can save that money by buying at Wal-Mart --- even if you can't get the brands you want --- then that's what you'll do.

But consider this: Wal-Mart has already pushed the regional discount stores out of business. Wal-Mart is poised to push independent, locally-owned supermarkets out of business. Once that happens, what pressure will there be for Wal-Mart to keep its prices low? If the Foodland down the block goes out of business, and you have to drive to the outskirts of town to go to Wal-Mart --- because Wal-Mart never builds in urbanized areas --- won't any savings on food purchases be burned up in extra gasoline?

Think about that the next time you make out a grocery list. I know I do. Would you rather spend your money at a company that provides good jobs for your friends and neighbors, or one that pays your friends and neighbors less than $6 per hour? Would you rather be able to buy kolbassi, pierogi and kolachi made in Duquesne or New Kensington, or buy products that some executive in Bentonville, Ark., is choosing for you? Would you rather support local dairy and poultry farmers in Beaver, Washington, Fayette and Westmoreland Counties, and local meatpackers, or save 10 cents on processed cheese and lunchmeat trucked in from Texas?

Local meatpackers, farmers and others employ thousands of workers, who in turn purchase goods and services from thousands of other businesses, large and small --- maybe even from the company for which you work. If those local companies disappear, so does the buying power of their employees.

So choose wisely. Because the job you save may be your own.

Now is the Summer of Our Discount Tent

Just days ago, I ranted about the inexplicably bad state of America's newspaper comics pages --- it's a topic that frankly, I'd like to see the presidential candidates address: "Bush Unveils 'No Comic Strip Left Behind Act,' Kerry Criticizes President's Alleged 'Funnies Failures.'"

Via alert Tube City Almanac reader Arden, I learned of the existence of the Best Page in the Universe (warning: not suitable for the sarcasm impaired), which features a wonderful rant about the ongoing dreadfulness of "Garfield":

There's nothing funny about Garfield. Every single comic starts out the same: Garfield sits around being fat, he eats all the food, and his ambiguously gay owner yells at him. The cat eats food. Alright, WE GET IT. Move on.

But buried at the end of the screed comes some shocking news that had some how escaped my notice: "'Garfield: The Movie' is poised to hit theaters this summer." Great googly-moogly, I thought. Can this be true?

It is.

"So what?" I hear you exclaim. "Who cares about a harmless feature-length cartoon?"

To which I reply, oh, no. This is much worse. This is a Garfield live-action movie. Starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, and a monstrously hideous computer-generated three-dimensional Garfield who looks like the demented love child of Elmo the Muppet and Louie Anderson.

With the voice of ... wait for it ... Bill Murray as Garfield.

This raises badness to previously inconceivable levels of bad. It transcends mere mortal pop-culture crud to create a new "ubercrud." It wasn't rotten enough to turn Scooby-Doo into a creepy, computerized Hound from Hell in two awful movies; no, now Garfield gets his chance to haunt our nightmares.

You may be worried about the war in Iraq, outsourcing, pollution or a dozen other unimportant causes, but I submit to you that as long as Hollywood is allowed to continue recycling mediocre cartoons ("Josie and the Pussycats," "Scooby-Doo," "The Flintstones," etc.) into live-action movies, we are in imminent danger of "Hong Kong Phooey: The Movie," featuring Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson.

At which point the collapse of American civilization will begin in earnest.

Call, write or wire your congress-critter and urge him, her or it to introduce legislation before it's too late. Because somewhere in Hollywood, even as we speak, an executive is reviewing a proposal for "The Beetle Bailey Movie," starring Rob Schneider in the title role and "The Rock" as Sgt. Snorkel.

Can't Get There From Here

This Tube City Online traffic report is brought to you by your Allegheny County De Soto Dealers, celebrating their 44th anniversary of going out of business: Tell 'em Groucho sent you!

Places to avoid this Wednesday morning include most of the Mon Valley. On Route 51 in Elizabeth, a fruit truck overturned, snarling traffic at the Clairton on-ramp. Meanwhile, the manhunt continues for someone who could most charitably be described as Not a Nice Man, according to Kathie Warco in the Observer-Reporter and Cindi Lash and Joe Fahy in the Post-Gazette.

Franklin Sebetich, 56, of Ellsworth, is wanted in connection with a home invasion; officers attempting to serve a warrant on him Tuesday morning were shot at, and since last night, a large swath of Carroll Township has been under a police dragnet.

In 1979, police arrested Sebetich and charged him with blowing up railroad tracks to derail a train (he was acquitted), but three years later, he was arrested for several bank robberies, including a hold-up at the credit union at California University of Pennsylvania.

Classes in the Ringgold School District are cancelled this morning, and several highways are restricted around Mon City, Donora and Carroll Township. According to published reports, Charleroi schools are also closed.

Speaking of traffic restrictions, we're working on a new feature here for Tube City Online. To help visitors cope with the often confusing network of roads in the Mon-Yough area, I'm compiling a list of shortcuts.

Your shortcut should be a timesaver that allows people access to, from or between locations in our area --- roughly the region bounded by Route 22 to the north, the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the east, and Route 51 to the south and west.

I'm also looking to hear about the most notorious speedtraps in your community. Email your favorite shortcut or speedtrap to me at j t 3 y at dementia dot org; you will get credit for your contribution (unless you don't want your name mentioned).

From the Tube City Online National Affairs Desk, Alan Blevins, a student at Texas A&M University, is voting for U.S. Senator Yawn Kerry, D-Monotonous, even if he doesn't particularly like him (link via Copeland).

Finally, if you want to see how Garry Trudeau's "Doonesbury" satirized Kerry in 1971 --- while Kerry was protesting the Vietnam War --- you can click here: John Kerry in "Doonesbury," 1971, Strip 1 | Strip 2 | Strip 3.

Random Notes

They have their work cut out for them, but a group of Clairton residents are uniting to try to save their town, according to Jennifer Vertullo in The Daily News:

Saturday was Join Hands Day in Clairton --- beginning a city-wide effort to reclaim the once-prosperous business district along Miller and St. Clair avenues. "It's been a great day," Councilman Dr. Thomas Meade said as the town's busy cleanup came to a close Saturday afternoon. "We've had incredible participation from all over the city and people of all ages."

Good news about Our Fair City in the Pittsburgh Business Times. Lynne Glover reports that UPMC McKeesport Hospital is going to reopen its School of Nursing, which closed in the 1970s.

Well ... sort of. The resurrected McKeesport Hospital school would be a satellite program of the nursing school at UPMC St. Margaret:

A formal proposal to expand, adding approximately 20 students at UPMC McKeesport, has not yet been submitted to the state Board of Nursing. But, (Alexis) Weber (director of UPMC St. Margaret's year-old practical nursing program) is hopeful that the program could begin as early as September.

"We surely could fill 20 seats," said Ms. Weber, who is proposing to serve as director for both hospital programs. The expansion would mean an increase in staffing from four to seven employees.

Also from the Business Times, a nice profile of new McKeesport Mayor Jim Brewster by Suzanne Elliott:

Even though McKeesport has money problems, Mr. Brewster said it's important for the city to put financing plans together to attract business. That includes going after available federal and state funds. ...

By actively courting businesses, the city may get two new shopping centers at the intersection of routes 48 and 148. Plus, it was able to land Huckestein Mechanical Services Inc., a mechanical engineering company that is relocating from Etna to the McKeesport side of the 254-acre RIDC Riverplace development, which also sits in the city of Duquesne.

The shopping centers would be in the 11th Ward at the site of the old Reliance Steel plant, which has been cleared for redevelopment.

From the Tube City Online email bag, can anyone out there help one of our readers? Richard Bartels writes: "I was wondering if you know of anyone who has a picture of the old Palisades Dance Hall from the early 1950's. My parents 50th wedding aniversary is coming up and that is where they first met. Any help would be greatly appreciated."

Email me at j t 3 y at dementia dot org and I'll pass your information along to Mr. Bartels.

Finally, I don't want to bore the readers (both of them) with a boring story about --- as one visitor to this site put it --- "(my) stupid car." Suffice it to say that after several hours of tinkering, two trips to the auto parts store, and a prodigious amount of profanity, this monster prowled the back roads of Washington County on Sunday evening:

This is a totally voluntary endorsement, but if you drive an old heap or are restoring one, like me, and it needs a new carburetor, you may want to try National Carburetors of Jacksonville, Fla. Their service was good, the price was reasonable, the quality of the carb they sent me appears to be very high, and the car started on the first try.

Well, actually, the second try. On the first try, we blew the vent caps off of the battery with an accompanying shower of sparks and flames.

Um, don't try that at home. Do it at a friend's house, like I did!

Time to Put 'Marmaduke' Out to Pasture

In "Doonesbury" last week, one of the strip's mainstay characters, B.D., lost a leg while serving in the Army Reserves in Iraq. The story has provoked a fairly heated discussion in the news media and online.

Well, perhaps "heated" is the wrong word. A warm discussion? A slightly above room temperature discussion? In any event, artist Garry Trudeau has been printing a selection of his fan mail (and hate mail) on his Web site.

At least there has been some reaction. Most of the comic strips on the average newspaper's page of "funnies" are neither "funny" nor especially interesting. No one has apparently noticed that "Gasoline Alley" has killed off one of its main characters; exactly who is unclear, because the artist, Jim Scancarelli, is toying with the audience right now.

I don't need every strip to provoke a reaction every day, but I do hope for a mild chuckle, a wry comment, or at least some intriguing pictures to look at.

Tell me the last time "Beetle Bailey" elicited any reaction from you. Or "Hagar the Horrible." Or "Marvin." Or "Hi and Lois." Or (shudder) "Marmaduke." Not only are they dull to read (the joke in "Marmaduke" is that he's a big, wacky dog who gets into comic mishaps!), the art has been static for years. Berke Breathed, who wrote some wickedly funny, nasty stuff in "Bloom County" years ago, made a big, noisy show of going back into comic strips this year with "Opus." So far, "Opus" has caused me to smile once or twice, but that's it. (I went back this weekend to see if "Bloom County" was as funny as I remembered it; it was.)

There are a few strips I'm ashamed to admit that I enjoy. "For Better or For Worse" is treacle, but it's well-written treacle; at least as well-written as much of network TV, even if it is soap opera-ish.

I find the metajokes and geek humor of "Fox Trot" amazing --- and it's even more amazing that Bill Amend's syndicate allows him to make references to topics that only nerds and science wonks will understand.

"Get Fuzzy" is a talking animal comic strip, and yet it consistently cracks me up. The naive dog Satchel and the wise-ass cat Bucky talk, but they talk about things that animals would talk about (often disgustingly so). It's a pity that no local paper runs it, except for the Beaver County Times (and then, only on Saturday).

I want to like "The Boondocks," which has generated gobs of publicity entirely unjustified by its quality. It was visually striking when it debuted, and it was encouraging to see an artist taking bold political stands and poking sticks at sacred cows. Now, however, it seems that Aaron McGruder is coasting; in an interview in The New Yorker last month, McGruder admitted that no only does he no longer draw the strip (he has hired an assistant), he is literally phoning the jokes in. If he doesn't feel like coming up with plots for new strips, he sends the barest of suggestions to the artist, or tells the syndicate to use reruns.

In the words of the New Yorker's Ben McGrath, "McGruder is not yet thirty, and already he is jaded, content to settle for the kind of perfectly passable work he so often eviscerates others for."

Newspaper circulation has been steadily declining for more than 40 years. Newspapers have basically lost 25-to-44 year olds, and in my experience, they've also lost 45-to-54 year olds, too. If the under-25 generation is growing up in houses that don't take any daily newspaper, then it would seem that they're unlikely to develop a newspaper habit after college, so we can safely assume that the next generation is going to stay away, too.

Given that most 25-to-44 year olds are comfortable with the use of cartoons as a storytelling medium --- as evidenced by the success of "South Park," "The Simpsons," etc. --- I would think it would be only natural to exploit the newspaper's ability to devote an entire page to cartoons by featuring the best and edgiest comic strips, and sending "Marmaduke" and the rest of the space-wasters to that happy newspaper graveyard in the sky. Instead of cramming 20 or 30 strips onto a page, trying to satisfy everyone, I'd run fewer comic strips, but run 'em large for greater impact.

Sure, the old farts who write letters to the editor --- and constitute most newspaper readers --- will make predictable complaints. Guess what? They'll read the newspaper no matter what. Let them complain. (Easy for me to say, I know.)

In the meantime, there is always the Internet --- home to a lot of lousy comic strips as well as some that deserve a space in the newspaper more than "Pot Shots" or "Shoe." One of them, in my never humble opinion, is "Rockwood," which has been running on this page since April 2. If you haven't checked it out yet, scroll down to the bottom of the page on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, when it's updated.