With all due respect to U.S. Steel, I don't think they know what they're doing.
Steelmaking in Pittsburgh is dead. The Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership says so. VisitPittsburgh.com says so. The blogging community says so. I mean, if you can't trust bloggers, who can you trust?
Anyway, we have moved past steel in Pittsburgh. The Pittsburgh Steelers are going to change their name to the Pittsburgh Biotechs. We're now known not for steel but for our new chief export, population.
That's why I can't understand why U.S. Steel, which netted $1.37 billion last year, is opening a new training center in Duquesne (at 1 S. Linden St., on the site of the old Duquesne Works).
I can't think of a worse place than Duquesne to open a steel training facility. Everyone knows it was lazy, unionized steelworkers from the Mon Valley who destroyed American industry. All the pundits in Washington said so. (Oh, and those "ironmaster awards" that Duquesne Works received in 1984 for productivity? Pay no attention to those.)
It gets worse, of course. I read that U.S. Steel plans to invest $1 billion in the Clairton Coke Works.
U.S. Steel apparently will use its own money to replace two coke batteries, rebuild six other coke batteries, and increase its electrical power-generating capacity.
Using its own money? That's crazy talk. Companies don't do that any more. They threaten to move to Charlotte or Kansas City, and they get money from the taxpayers. Hell, if it worked for the Pirates, Biotechs and Penguins, it would work for U.S. Steel.
And if you take the tax money, it's not like you have to live up to your end of the deal. How many times were the taxpayers of Allegheny County and Pennsylvania bent over for U.S. Airways?
Maybe U.S. Steel stock is selling near an all-time high, and maybe mutual funds are buying shares like crazy, though it's hard to believe that all of the public-relations experts and pundits who are trying to "re-image Pittsburgh" could be wrong.
Sure, maybe U.S. Steel CEO John Surma knows what the hell he's doing.
But if he's really smart, he'll take my advice, and open a research facility to develop maglev trains, or build a racetrack-casino, or lease the Pennsylvania Turnpike, or build a speculative strip-mall shopping center. Lord knows, we don't have enough cruddy, half-empty strip malls.
As far I'm concerned, Surma's idea that you can make money by actually manufacturing things is pretty quaint. After all, that's what the Chinese are for.
. . .
In Other News: Pitt has received $41.3 million in donations from John Swanson, founder of Ansys Inc. The university is renaming its school of engineering in his honor.
It shouldn't surprise you to learn that there's a Mon-Yough connection. Swanson developed his theories of computerized stress analysis while working for the former Westinghouse Astronuclear Laboratory on Route 51 in Large, Jefferson Hills borough, located in the old Large Distillery.
Since microcomputers weren't available when Swanson was doing his research in the 1960s, he rented time on a mainframe owned by ... yep, U.S. Steel. They're still in business, right?
. . .
Speaking of Steel: I just learned that it's the 110th anniversary of the opening of the former U.S. Steel Christy Park Works. Now known as CP Industries, the plant on Walnut Street in the city's Christy Park neighborhood manufactures seamless high-pressure tanks to store natural gas and other pressurized chemicals and compounds.
Major customers include the aerospace and chemical industries, construction companies, food processors, health care providers, nuclear power companies, oil and gas businesses, undersea explorers, and manufacturers of natural gas vehicles.
You can take an online tour at CP's website.
Yep, it's another company making things out of steel in the Mon Valley. Insane, or just crazy like a fox? Hmm.
. . .
Festival of Trees: McKeesport's annual Festival of Trees opens today at 12 noon at Jacob Woll Pavilion in Renziehausen Park. Community groups from all over the area have decorated dozens of Christmas trees in different themes and motifs.
Santa Claus will be on hand daily, and the city public works department will be providing sleigh rides through Renzie Park tonight and tomorrow night, and all day Saturday and Sunday. The McKeesport High School alumni association will provide refreshments, and the nearby McKeesport Heritage Center will be open for special hours.
If you've never been there, it is definitely worth a visit; the event continues through Sunday. Call (412) 675-5068 for more information, or click here for directions.
Prohibition ended 74 years ago today with the ratification of the 21st Amendment. I'll drink to that!
Come to think of it, I need a drink. The debate over the county's new drink tax almost drove me over the edge.
Now, I'm not in favor of new taxes. (I don't even like the old ones.) But as taxes go, a levy on mixed drinks in taverns and bars seems about as painless as possible to most people.
. . .
I have sympathy for bartenders, waitresses and small-business owners who will now need to keep track of taxes and submit a bunch of extra paperwork. But I have no sympathy for the dire predictions made by the Pennsylvania Restaurant Association and the local group calling itself "Friends Against Counterproductive Taxation."
The idea that residents of Allegheny County will go to Westmoreland or Washington to drink, or that they won't drink as much, is ridiculous, bordering on "offensively stupid."
I can just see college kids in Oakland, considering their options:
"Dude, let's do a pub crawl!"
"Not in Oakland, dude! There's a 10 percent tax!"
"Oh, man! Let's drive to Murrysville instead!"
Do you toot?
Sorry, I didn't mean to get so personal. Let me rephrase the question: Do you blow?
Er, that didn't sound right, either. What I'm trying to say is perfectly innocent: Do you honk your car's horn? (And does your car enjoy it? Cue Ed McMahon: Heigh-yo!)
A few weeks ago, during his regular chat at the Washington Post website, Gene Weingarten asked readers if they blow their horn when they're sitting behind a car that doesn't move when the light turns green, or which blocks an intersection.
If they do, he wanted to know, do they feel guilty?
. . .
Weingarten's poll didn't address the different degrees of honking. I don't think it's rude to give someone two friendly blips --- beep, beep! --- if they don't notice the light. And if someone does something dangerous, by all means, give them a full-throated honk --- BLLAAAAAAAAAAAATTTTTT!!!.
Some people don't know the difference, unfortunately. I'll give you an example. If you're familiar with the intersection (I almost said a bad word, starting with "cluster") next to Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in Dravosburg, you know that it's an outdated mess, both day and night.
If the traffic lights were ever synchronized, they're not any more, which means traffic on Richland Avenue (also known as "Pittsburgh-McKeesport Boulevard" or "Dravosburg Hill") sometimes waits for several minutes in the middle of the night for non-existent vehicles to exit Bettis Road.
Lord help you if you're in-bound down Dravosburg Hill to the city or Glassport from West Mifflin, and someone wants to make a left turn against traffic onto Bettis Road. You might wait through an entire cycle. Then traffic backs up Lebanon Church Road toward the airport through the other red light; I've seen traffic stacked to Mr. Hoagie on a Sunday night for no discernible reason, except that the lights are mistimed.
. . .
A few days ago, I was stuck in a long line of cars trying to head toward the Mansfield Bridge from Lebanon Church Road. Traffic was backed up through two red lights. We waited through one red-green-yellow cycle, and a second. Then some idiot about five cars behind me started leaning on his horn: BLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAATTTTTTT.
I wrote about this a few years ago. What's a goofball like that think he's accomplishing?
(And maybe I'm being very presumptuous to assume it was a guy who was honking. Sue me.)
Any enlightenment on the topic of horn-honking etiquette --- at least as we practice it in the Mon Valley and Greater Picksberg --- would be appreciated. Drop your comments in the slot below.
It's goulash time!
Well, after two months of temporarily being an ink-stained wretch, I'm back to being a pixel-stained wretch. In other words, I've gone back to writing in the Intarweb tubes at work after pinch-hitting for a few weeks as editor of the weekly newspaper.
This is a good thing, since two months of 10-hour days have worn me right to a frazzle and haven't left a whole lot in the tank when I've gotten home.
Normal service will resume shortly. Right now, my legs are still pinwheeling like Fred Flintstone's. (I can even hear the bongo drums.)
Anyway, until I decompress, you're getting goulash.
In the meantime, there are a lot of things to talk about, especially this, plus this, and even this.
And --- oh, yeah --- eat crow, Mountaineers! Alleghenee-genac-genac-genac, y'all!
In the event that I don't come up with anything half-witty to say about these or other light topics in the news, feel free to comment on the announcement that U.S. Steel plans to invest $1 billion in the Clairton Works, or the attack on the elderly man in Buena Vista, or even the Eagles' run at the state football championship.
Or, you might like to see a black-and-white clip of one of the very first episodes of "The $10,000 Pyramid." That's this week's installment of "Monday Morning Nostalgia Fix" over at Pittsburgh Radio & TV Online. (Motto: "If it's news to you, it's news to us.)
Now, if you'll excuse me, I hear Mr. Slate calling. (Where did I put my Polarock camera?)
. . .
Horn-Tooting Dep't: I don't suppose anyone happened to see November's issue of Popular Communications magazine.
I was asked to do a full-color, full-page illustration to accompany a story about "zombie computers." If you didn't see it (PopComm is available at Scozio's Giant Eagle in White Oak, Barnes & Noble in Homestead, and at better newsstands everywhere) click here.
There's a follow-up (and another illustration) in the January issue, and the promise of more work to come, according to my editor. The pay ain't much, but every little bit helps keep me in Straub, kids.
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