Yes, it's an unusual Saturday Almanac, but these are unusual times in Mon-Yough country, as we'll see in a minute.
That "thud" you heard in the 11th Ward yesterday was the other shoe --- a G-man's brogan, no doubt --- falling hard on the offices of Capco Contracting. Owner Thomas Cousar, two Capco managers, and a fourth man are charged in what the Post-Gazette's Torsten Ove called "a complex scheme" to overbill the U.S. government for work relating to the reconstruction of the Pentagon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Cousar and the Capco personnel are also charged with ripping off the companies that built PNC Park and the Petersen Events Center.
Federal prosecutor Mary Beth Buchanan says what the Post-Gazette calls "padded bills, falsified documents, tax fraud and kickbacks" cost the contractors and the taxpayers more than $1 million.
She said that the alleged Petersen Center and PNC Park frauds "cost the general contractors on those projects, but not the taxpayers," but that's a lot of hooey, it says here. If true, the extra costs no doubt helped drive up the price of both the Petersen Center and PNC Park, both of which relied in part on tax assistance to one degree or another --- the Petersen being owned by the University of Pittsburgh and PNC Park being owned by the Sports & Exhibition Authority.
(Standard disclaimer: I do not speak for the University of Pittsburgh. They don't speak for me. Some days, I don't even speak for myself. But on other days, I do talk to myself. That's a story for another time.)
The government alleges that sometimes, Capco diverted supplies, including ceiling tiles and drywall, from the Pentagon job site to McKeesport, where they were reused in other projects. Other times, Capco was charging the feds for the cost of workers who were supposed to be at the Pentagon; instead, they were on Walnut Street, helping build, among other things, the (now-closed) Tube City Cafe.
Though the restaurant wasn't open for very long, I ate there several times, and it kind of turns my stomach to think that all of the old pictures and McKeesport memorabilia were hung on walls that were supposed to be replacing the ones taken out in Washington, D.C., when American Airlines Flight 77 hit the building.
Sixty-four people, including the suspected terrorists, died on the plane, and 125 people died on the ground. And if the feds are to be believed, Mr. Cousar diverted money and material that was to be used to help bind up the wounds back to McKeesport to build ... a so-so restaurant.
Tube City Cafe, and Capco's offices next door, were raided by federal agents two years ago. The feds are now trying to seize Cousar's house in Monroeville and the Capco offices.
If I can be pedantic for a moment --- and I can be pedantic for a lot longer than that, believe me --- note that Cousar is from Monroeville these days. And yet all of the newspaper headlines call him a "McKeesport contractor." Let Monroeville take credit for him!
It wasn't that long ago that folks were lauding Cousar as a local success story. The county gave him a $400,000 loan in 2003 to build a new warehouse in the Third Ward, on the site of the old Tube City Brewing Co. Said Cousar at the time: "Having the opportunity to build the new Capco office in the 3rd Ward, one block away from my roots of Harrison Village, is a great endeavor. Walnut Street used to be a culturally diverse and dynamic business community. It has great potential to regain that vibrance and I’m proud that Capco can be involved.”
But construction work at the warehouse stopped when the federales busted in a few months later. The unfinished shell of the building sits there, still, another empty building amid all of the other empty and dilapidated buildings in the neighborhood.
If the indictment is accurate, then it doesn't look good for Cousar or Capco.
On the other hand, if there's any painting work that needs to be done at Allenwood Federal Penitentiary, I think the warden may soon be in luck.
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By the way, although this is Tube City Online and the Tube City Almanac, I have absolutely no connection to Tube City Cafe. I did bid on a Pentagon contract recently, but was disqualified, on the dubious grounds that I was --- as they put it --- "an incompetent ninny."
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Nostalgia note: The Capco offices were once the home of Gilbert Lumber, a nice hardware store and lumberyard I had the pleasure of dealing with numerous times when I was a kid. Like most of our local lumberyards, they were run out of business by the big chains --- first, Hechinger and Builder's Square, and now Lowe's and Home Depot. If the federal charges are accurate, then the guys currently running that building are a distinctly different breed from the people who ran Gilbert Lumber.
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Meanwhile, the news remains weird out of Our Fair City's school district. The Trib and the News are both reporting that two teachers from Cornell Intermediate School have been accused of practicing some sexual education in a classroom there while two other teachers guarded the door.
(How do you get asked to do that favor? "Say, Bert, you don't have a class to teach seventh period, right? Maybe you can help me out ....")
Both of the teachers accused have been placed on paid leave and the district has hired an out-of-town attorney to conduct an investigation (I almost wrote "probe," a-huh-huh-huh-huh). The Picksberg TV news yakkers had a field day with this, naturally: "Teachers having sex in school! We'll have the shocking story, and the reaction, next at 11!" (Followed by a five-minute discussion of partly cloudy skies and a three-minute dissertation on Ben Roethlisberger's thumb.)
Hiring someone without ties to the district seems like the right move. Getting an outsider to conduct the inquiry should help insulate the district against charges that it's trying to sweep this under the rug --- assuming, that is, that the school board releases the findings, and we all know that school boards just love to be completely forthcoming with taxpayers.
Ah, right. I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt and hope they continue to do the right thing. And since one of the alleged lookouts says he wasn't even working for the district when the supposed incident happened, I'll give the teachers the benefit of the doubt, too,
As long as they weren't diverting construction supplies from the site of one of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. I might be able to tolerate teachers knocking boots in the cloakroom, but even I have my limits.
Jonathan Barnes, who covers Our Fair City for the Post-Gazette, has been covering the Sago Mine disaster for the Reuters news agency. He's writing about his experiences at his blog, Barnestormin. If you want to read the stories behind the headlines, this is good stuff --- go read it.
(We can debate why Reuters and other print agencies aren't running in-depth pieces like these, instead of Jonathan having to publish them for free on his blog, but newspapers and wire services these days like to spend more time wringing their hands than fixing their problems. That's a discussion for another time, and besides, Dave Copeland is already having it.)
Dennis Roddy's piece in the P-G this morning packed an emotional wallop, too.
"OK, wiseguy," I heard you say after yesterday's Almanac, "if you're so smart, what would you do with the People's Building?"
I'm glad you asked that, hypothetical straw man that I'm using to set up my argument.
It strikes me that Our Fair City is stuck with two white elephants (no, not the White Elephant) right now: The People's Building and the closed Lysle Boulevard parking garage.
The People's Building lost its primary reason for being when the doctors, lawyers and insurance agents that made up most of its tenants bought their own buildings out in White Oak and Versailles. (A soft real-estate market and low interest rates will do that.) Combine that with the lack of free on-street parking nearby, and a building like the People's Building has a tough time competing.
The Lysle garage was hit by several whammies --- first, some of its most reliable tenants were the employees of National Works, just across the railroad tracks. Some 7,000 men and women were employed at the plant in its heyday. With the mill's closure, and the demolition of most of the buildings for the RIDC Industrial Park, the employees of the remaining businesses can now be accommodated on-site. Second, the decline of the Downtown business district (coincident, if not directly caused by, the mill's decline) eliminated much of the need for parking. Third, the garage needs significant repairs that weren't cost effective to accommodate the handful of cars still using it --- especially when plenty of other parking capacity exists Downtown.
Now, the Almanac is on record as thinking the garage should be purchased by or given to Port Authority Transit for use as a park-and-ride ... I figure that rehabbing the old girl has to be cheaper than the $21 million PAT spent to build a garage in South Hills Village.
Since we have a big empty office building across Lysle Boulevard, let's go further.
One of the things that chased the doctors, lawyers, insurance agents and other tenants out of the People's Building was parking --- or at least that's one of the excuses. Well, here's a parking garage catty-corner across the street.
But wait --- decades of parking at malls and shopping centers have conditioned Americans, frankly, to feel that they shouldn't have to walk more than a hundred feet, or get their tootsies wet, when they go from their car to an office or store. They certainly don't want to cross a state highway.
So, let's take a page from The Waterfront in Homestead, and from any number of cities (Rochester, N.Y., for instance) and connect the garage to the People's Building with a spiffy looking pedestrian bridge. I'm thinking of something that's mostly glass, but trimmed in Russian iron and circular steel products, to celebrate the city's heritage. And a nice, polished metal sign that said, "Welcome to McKeesport" would be a handsome gateway to motorists passing through OFC to boot.
And let's put a bridge and staircase from the other side of the garage, too, across the CSX railroad tracks and into the RIDC park.
Renovating the garage has to be at least a $3 million project, I'm guessing, at least. Maybe more. Assuming that it's free to park-and-ride customers, then it ought to be divided between the city Redevelopment Authority, the RIDC, and the Port Authority. And it seems to me that since the federal and state governments are so big these days on "inter-government cooperation," then there ought to be grant money available for something like this. Possibly private grants, too.
Now, there are some problems to overcome. For instance, the People's Building is not directly across the street from the garage, the pedestrian bridge would have to "dog leg." Air rights would have to be negotiated with the owners of the building that houses CVS drug store. Permission would have to be gained from PennDOT, because Lysle Boulevard is a state highway. And I have no idea what the bridge would cost.
Still, I have to imagine that all this could be worked out, if someone had the will. It'd be a hell of a lot easier than building the Mon-Fayette Expressway, or maglev trains, and look how much energy we're expending on those. (And as we'll see soon, it will have a better, and quicker, payoff to the city than either of those.)
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So, once we get people from their cars to the People's Building, what are they going to find? The same old cramped, 1900s vintage offices?
Not on your autographed photo of George H. Lysle. First, the elevator is going to be upgraded to comply with modern standards for handicapped accessiblity. Maybe we're even going to install a freight elevator.
It may be worth demolishing the empty retail space next to the People's Building (formerly Ruben's Furniture, and most recently a D&K store) to put the freight entrance there, and give trucks a place to unload.
Next, heavy-duty high-speed Internet capability is going to be brought to the building by one of the big network providers, because they're going to be promised an exclusive contract to serve the tenants. Internet and phone cables are going to be pulled up through the elevator shaft.
A generator and an uninterruptible power supply is going to be installed down in the basement, where the bank vault used to be, and special electrical outlets are going to be installed throughout the building.
Then, starting floor by floor (in order to conserve capital), the old wooden and glass office partitions are going to be removed (carefully), and the floors are going to be brought up to modern standards. (We're going to save those partitions, because some tenants are going to want them to lend an appropriate "vintage" atmosphere to their offices.) That's going to include spiffy new windows, forced air heat and cooling for each floor, along with new fluorescent lights and vinyl tile and carpet.
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Now, we've got an office building perfectly suited for use by any company, office, organization or firm that needs reliable computer service (practically everyone these days) but doesn't need to be in downtown Picksberg.
Such renovations are going to cost millions of dollars, of course --- $1 million a floor, I'll bet --- but even with those costs built in, the rent is still going to be considerably cheaper than rent in Picksberg. The rent will probably be less than constructing a new building out in Monroeville or something like that, and thus ideal for start-up companies.
To serve our new tenants, the first floor is going to house some type of retail operation that caters to small businesses. Maybe Kinko's or The UPS Store. Maybe a Sir Speedy printing franchise ... or perhaps a local printer. And on the mezzanine, we put a snack room with vending machines, in hopes that (eventually) a small restaurant or lunch cart moves in.
Finally, access to the upper floors of the building will be by key card only. And we'll stick a guard at the parking garage walkway at least 14 hours a day, mainly in the afternoon and overnight. That makes the building secure, and helps mitigate against the lingering perception that Downtown is "unsafe."
Is there a certain amount of risk to all of this? Of course. Would it take a lot of work by the area's politicians, banks and funding organizations? Absolutely.
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The alternatives are to allow a big, empty building to continue to sit at one of the busiest intersections in town. Or worse --- to tear down a 100-year-old landmark, and leave the city with another empty lot Downtown. The existing empty lots don't seem to be too marketable ... the lot where the Memorial Theater used to stand has now been empty for 20 years.
The benefits? Well, you'd increase the value of the building, thus generating property taxes for the city. You'd fill it with people who pay occupational privilege taxes to the city. Assuming that part of the Lysle Boulevard garage remains paid parking, you'd make it a revenue-generating asset again, instead of a liability.
And if you have several 100 people working the People's Building, and parking in the Lysle garage to take the bus, you wouldn't have so many empty storefronts along Fifth Avenue ... you'd need the kinds of small businesses that spring up near office buildings. Fast food restaurants, card stores, clothing shops, and the like. You'd also raise the value of all of the surrounding buildings.
Am I crazy? Possibly, but I don't think this proposal is proof of it. Your comments, criticisms, and catcalls or welcome. And if anyone from the city, RIDC or the Downtown McKeesport Association happens to see this, and thinks that all or part of it is worthwhile, feel free to adapt the ideas as you see fit. I won't even ask for any money or credit.
A couple of rides on the new elevator would be nice, though.
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To Do This Weekend: The ArtSpace 303 gallery, 303 E. Eighth Ave., Homestead, hosts "The Inside of Numbers," a sculpture installation by artist Sarah Walko. The show opens with a reception at 7 p.m. Saturday and continues through Jan. 28. Call (412) 326-0100 ... St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church, 1907 Eden Park Blvd., hosts the Ukrainian Cultural Trust Choir at 3 p.m. Sunday. Call (412) 678-2206.
There was an upbeat story in The Daily News on Saturday about changes coming to Fifth Avenue in Our Fair City. According to the piece, by Pat Cloonan, Mayor James Brewster and City Adminstrator Dennis Pittman continue waging a relentless war of common sense in the city.
Among other things expected to transpire:
It looks like the vacant Penn-McKee Hotel could get a new lease on life after all. The registered owner, See Bee Inc. (as Tube City Almanac has reported, the tax bills go to E.L. Kemp), is near a sale or lease agreement with someone else. No word on what the building would be used for, but it seems ideal for senior-citizen housing, with possibly some light retail on the first floor. I would think its proximity to the McKees Point Marina and the Palisades would bode well.
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Fifth Avenue is finally, finally being converted back to two-way traffic, pending conversion of traffic lights and approval from PennDOT. The city went through a mania in the '60s of converting streets to one-way in hopes of easing congestion in the business district. (Personally, at this point, I'd like to see a little congestion in the business district; to paraphrase the words of Yogi Berra, Downtown has apparently gotten so crowded that nobody goes there any more.)
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Developer Barry Stein, who bought the Midtown Plaza Mall a few years ago and finally let sunshine beam down on Fifth Avenue again after decades of darkness, says two more stores are going to open along Lysle Boulevard. And he's purchasing the building that houses Thee Record Warehouse. The venerable record store is regrettably going out of business several years after the death of its co-founder, Dave Raymer. Stein tells Cloonan that he has plans for the building, which once housed The Canopy, but he's not going to discuss them yet.
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And then there's The People's Building, formerly the People's Union Bank Building. The city treasurer's office has recently moved out of the first floor and back into the Municipal Building at Lysle and Market. All city offices are slated to move down to the former McKeesport National Bank Building once Sky Bank completes construction of its new office near McKeesport Hospital. It's nice to see that the old National Bank building (a registered historic landmark) will get a new tenant.
So where does that leave the People's Building, a venerable landmark in its own right, now a century old? (The late Mayor Joe Bendel once told me that "every Navy needs a battleship, and the People's Building is McKeesport's battleship.") According to the News, the new owner is being identified as "California-based Regis Possino." Possino is proposing that the upper floors be converted into housing, while the lower floors remain office and retail space.
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Now, as I turned this around and around in my head, it just didn't seem right. I bow to no one in my affection for the city, and I feel Downtown is perfectly safe. But the perception among former McKeesporters is that Downtown is dangerous. I think that's baloney, but that's how it is.
So I question turning the People's Building into housing. It's perfectly suited for back office space for a growing company, or as a small business incubator (like the old Montgomery Ward building on Fifth Avenue near Huey Street), but I strongly doubt you'd get anyone to buy a condo or rent an apartment there. At least for a few years, until you were able to get Fifth Avenue scrubbed up and occupied by some businesses.
Anyway, I decided to see what other real estate projects Mr. Possino has been involved in. Maybe, I thought, he has a history of redeveloping old downtown properties.
Well, not exactly, though I did find a number of newspaper articles about him. If they're accurate, they don't paint a flattering picture.
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch calls Mr. Possino "a disbarred lawyer with separate convictions for drug dealing and fraud" ("Firm's operations could trouble voters," Aug. 13, 2005).
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Possino sold 350 pounds of marijuana to undercover police officers in 1978; he lost his license to practice in 1984, and has admitted that his ineffective defense of a woman accused of murder led to her conviction ("Fighting back for her life," June 9, 2002).
The Wall Street Journal reported in 2000 that Possino was involved in what the newspaper called "fluctations" of the stock of a number of Internet companies, but it stopped short of accusing him of any wrongdoing ("Heard on the street," May 26, 2000, no public link available).
A Canadian trade publication, Stockwatch Canada, calls Possino "one of those colourful characters who suffer misfortune after misfortune, but keep bouncing back in big-league cases" and a "major behind-the-scenes player" in the General Commerce Bank of Austria ("SEC target Switzer rolls L-Air down the runway," Feb. 19, 2003).
According to the Sunday Mail of London, General Commerce Bank was implicated in 2001 "in an international fraud to ramp the prices of low-value stocks. Broking firms in Bangkok were raided and 81 people were arrested. Days later, General Commerce Bank collapsed into insolvency" ("The long trail of deceit," Jan. 27, 2002).
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Now --- in all due fairness to Mr. Possino, this is a lot of "guilt by association." He hasn't been arrested. Corporations in which he's been involved have been in trouble, but as far as I can tell, he has not been charged, sued or indicted. And a marijuana-peddling conviction 27 years ago does not mean that he hasn't gone straight since then. (His willingness to speak out on behalf of the California convict speaks in his favor, I'd say.)
Also, Pittman is quoted in the News as saying Possino is "very upbeat" about the People's Building, and that he wants "to be a part of the community."
I'm willing to take Possino at his word (provided he backs his words up with activity, of course).
Still, I think city officials have plenty of reasons to be cautious. Recall that the city Redevelopment Authority sold the People's Building in 2002 to a Nevada company called Strong Partners Inc. That company then immediately re-sold the building to Geneva Equities of Santa Monica, Calif., for $2 million.
Strong, as it turned out, was a subsidiary of Geneva Equities, the president of which --- until recently --- was Possino, according to Stockwatch. In 2004, Geneva defaulted on the loan it used to buy the building. At one point, according to the same Post-Gazette story by Jonathan Barnes, Geneva wanted to donate the People's Building to "an Indian tribe to start a casino."
(Geneva is still getting the tax bills, according to the Allegheny County Recorder of Deeds, so they are apparently still the legal owner.)
I wish Possino and his partners all the best in the world. I certainly hope they succeed either in redeveloping the People's Building, or selling it soon to someone who will.
But I suggest the city watch this situation very closely, and if public money is pledged to redevelop the building, I certainly hope they scrutinize any financial arrangements carefully. The picture of Possino's past activities painted by the media reports, if accurate, is not encouraging, and extreme caution and diligence are warranted.
There's plenty at stake --- including the ownership and future of one of the city's most recognizable landmarks. I spoke out, loudly, when Integra Bank threatened to tear the People's Building down. I want it to be put to a good, revenue-generating use.
I'm hopeful but extremely wary about Possino's involvement. I trust city officials are wary as well.
Over the holidays, I decided to use one of my days off to go to the movies. Specifically, to see George Clooney's biopic of Edward R. Murrow, Good Night, and Good Luck, since I already have practically every book ever written about the Murrow/Friendly era at CBS.
(On the one occasion when I actually had an "office" as a reporter --- something like Les Nessman's "office," to tell the truth --- I had a framed picture of Murrow on the wall. I thought it would help inspire me and my co-workers to work as hard and as ethically as Murrow ... until someone asked me if it was a picture of my grandfather. It turns out they didn't know who Murrow was. Sic transit gloria mundi, Ed.)
Unfortunately, Good Night was only playing at one movie house in the area, which for the purposes of this Almanac I will call the "Hamster Hill 5," because I don't want to get my keister sued. The reason why will become apparent in a few minutes.
The Hamster Hill 5 is owned by a company that likes to portray itself as the only movie theater chain in the Pittsburgh area that shows "artsy" pictures, and that's true --- to a point. But it shows darn few of them, and it usually shows them on dimly-lit screens in theaters that are, to use a favorite phrase of my friend, the late Larry Slaugh, "upholstered toilets."
The Hamster Hill 5 is no exception. The carpets and upholstery at Hamster Hill were installed at least two owners ago, and so were the candy and popcorn, while the lobby decorations consist of several broken video games from the 1980s, and the entire theater smells like the inside of a wino's raincoat. (Or rather, um, at least what I imagine the inside of a wino's raincoat smells like. Sure, that's it.)
Anyway, a check on the Internet revealed that Good Night was showing at a 12:25 matinee at the Hamster Hill 5, which would save me several dollars off of an evening showing, so I drove into Picksberg to see it. The city neighborhood where the theater is located is notoriously hard to park in, but I did find a space, and I got to the ticket window at 12:30. (Since the previews usually eat up five to 10 minutes, I assumed I was OK.)
"One for Good Night," I said.
"Oh, I'm sorry," the lady said. "That movie already was supposed to start."
"Well, that's OK," I said. "I'm sure I didn't miss much."
"No," she said, "it was supposed to start at 12:25, but since no one was here, we didn't start it."
"Can't you just start it now?" I said.
"Oh, no, that would throw our whole schedule off."
Steam curled from under my collar, but I stayed civil. "When is the next show?" I asked.
"2:45."
"I might as well buy one ticket for 2:45, then," I said.
I went into the office for a little while, did some work, and then went back to the Hamster Hill 5 at 2:35. That gave me plenty of time to stop and buy a small Diet Pepsi (warm, and flat, $3) before the show, and I opened the door to the auditorium as the previews started.
Now, you know how some theaters have "Dolby surround sound"? This one had surround sound, all right --- that of 1,000 flatulent elks being dragged around a gravel parking lot by riding lawnmowers at full throttle. The previews were playing, but all we could hear was an ear-splitting "R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R!" If we had just had picture and no sound, it would have been tolerable, but this was torture.
I turned around, exited the auditorium, and went to the projection booth: It was filthy and no one was in sight. Another patron walked over to complain to the ticket seller.
"Are you sure the sound isn't supposed to be like that?" the ticket seller said, clearly unmotivated to do anything. Once we assured her that we weren't seeing The Flatulent Elk on a Lawnmower in a Gravel Parking Lot Story (which I understand Adam Sandler has optioned for a scheduled Christmas 2007 release), she promised to call the projectionist.
Time passed. The previews ended. The ticket seller lifted not a finger, so far as we could tell. The auditorium emptied, and people began milling around in the lobby, complaining to the candy-counter clerk and the ticket seller.
She promised that the projectionist was on his way. I sipped my Diet Pepsi and watched, through the smeary little window in the door to the auditorium, as the opening credits rolled on Good Luck.
More time passed. The complaints became more vocal. The projectionist is coming, the ticket seller said again. "Where the hell is he coming from?" someone yelled. Someone else demanded to see the manager. "He is the manager," she said.
After about 10 minutes, someone came ambling down the hallway, entered the projection booth, and yelled an obscenity. Suddenly the noise ended and the sound cleared up. And then he stopped the movie.
The ticket seller walked up the stairs to the booth, and they conferred quietly. Then she came back down.
"You can all have a pass to another movie," she said.
"We don't want to see another movie," someone in the crowd said. "We want to see this movie. Just re-start it."
"We can't," she said, "it would throw off our schedule."
This place is great with schedules, I thought. Sure, they never actually show anyone any movies, but they do maintain their schedules.
"How much longer is this movie here?" I asked.
"Tomorrow is the last day." I had to work the following day.
That Good Night is a black-and-white film set at CBS in the 1950s was appropriate, because I was now ready to do a full-blown Jackie Gleason-style rant --- slam my hand on the counter and start threatening to send people to the moon. I'd now killed most of a sunny day; paid to park; paid three bucks for a flat, warm Diet Pepsi; and returned twice only to be told that because of the incompetence and general laziness of the theater employees, I wasn't going to see the movie.
"I'd like my money back," I said.
"But the passes are good for six months," she said.
Now, can you imagine wanting to see anything else at the Hamster Hill 5 at this point? I can't. If Jesus Christ himself were appearing in Auditorium 4 at 12:25, 2:30, 4:45, 7:15 and 9:40, I think I'd wait for the DVD.
"My money back, please," I said.
So I exited the theater, five bucks and half a flat Diet Pepsi in hand, just as students were being dismissed from the high school up the block, which meant that traffic had come to a virtual standstill.
(Incidentally, the same chain that owns the Hamster Hill 5 recently closed one of its other theaters --- and one of its nicer ones, though it had the same surly management and the same half-comatose employees. Word is that the theater, built in the '30s, is going to be demolished for an office building. Because Lord knows that Western Pennsylvania doesn't have enough half-empty office buildings. Way to support "artsy" films, fellas.)
I suppose I can catch Good Night, and Good Luck on DVD in a few months. Still, I think there's something to be said for seeing a movie on a big screen with a live audience.
But if that movie is at the Hamster Hill 5 --- or any of the remaining theaters owned by the same company --- the something I'm going to say is, "no, thanks."
A little New Year's greeting, courtesy of the late Cy Hungerford, longtime editorial cartoonist for the Post-Gazette. This graphic appeared on the front page of the P-G for Jan. 1, 1966. (Apologies for the quality --- it's taken from the microfilm at Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh.)
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