Hi,
Nova place’s Federal Galley opened a few weeks ago, I’m hoping to make it down there this week. I’ve been hearing good things about it. The food galley in Oxford Centre opened last week. A nice change from the old style food courts of fast food you’d find in shopping malls.
New things with the eagle nests in both Harmar and Hays they re positioned Harmar’s camera so that you can now see inside the nest now and both cameras are HD, much better images if you’d like to watch the new parents. They’re funny to watch, last week the Harmar male brought part of an old sweater that they tucked into the back of the nest. Then he brought a piece of corn stalk that they still haven’t found a home for it in their nest, it’s just kind of hanging out there. Harmar has one egg and Hays has three, Hay’s parents are more mature. Something else that is nice is you can toggle back and forth between the two nests.
Also, Hope the peregrine falcon that has made her home on the top of The Cathedral of Learning has also laid an egg. She lost her hubby last year I think it was, he was found in a field somewhere. So she hooked up with some guy that had a nest on the Tarentum bridge and made him move to Oakland.
Point Breeze Brugge has been open for years and they added Highland Park Brugge a year or so ago. Their third location is opening down the street at City of Asylum replacing the failed Casellula. Bugge does a nice job, particularly their mussels special. They are customizing the menu for their newest locations, I hope they bring the mussels over here. They are offering a limited menu and plan on having their full menu available towards the end of April.
Lets keep talking restaurants, Union Standard in the HC Frick’s Union Trust Building is celebrating it’s one year anniversary. I ate there when they opened, it hardly seems a year has past. It is the only independent restaurant in the building, the others are chain restaurants. Chef-owner Derek Stevens back ground is mainly at the Big Burrito restaurant group. The food’s great, ambience is great, it’s well worth lunch or dinner. If for no other reason than an excuse to go into this fabulous newly renovated building the new owners put over $100M in renovations.
Changing the subject a bit, I’m pretty much sold out this week. I was wondering what was going on until I had a guest right before I left for Florida (more on that in a minute) I had a guest from the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts Conference kicks off next Wednesday March 14 at the DL Lawrence Convention center through the 17. If you go and you should remember to bring a ceramic shard for Pittsburgh artist Laura Jean McLaughlin’s unity shards sculpture she will be creating in City of Asylum’s garden here on the Northside. I spoke about Laura in a past post, she did the mosaics on some Southside Slopes stairs. Her new installation will be uniting people from all over America and even the world. You can drop your shards off at the convention.
Dormont’s historic Hollywood Theater has just re-opened with new owners. The new owners the Theatre Historical Society of America have pulled off a major coupe. They are running the huge hit the Black Panther, they are probably the only single screen theater in America showing this chart topping film. It’s not big bucks that’s bringing the Panther in, it’s their connections in the industry. They wanted to re-open with a bang and I would say this qualifies with a big bang. The building was owned by a real estate firm and Friends of the Hollywood Theater has been running it under a lease agreement. FOHT has done fund raising and been steadily improving the venue. It looks like the new owners will have the where with all to take the theater to it’s next level. I’m glad to see the new owners are planning on keeping the FOHT eclectic mix of shows like The Rocky Horror Picture Show, anime, horror, documntaries and of course spaghetti westerns with a spaghetti dinner type events. Tickets are a very affordable $7 general admission and $5 for THS and FOHT members. The Hollywood was originally built in 1925 but was gutted and totally remodeled in 1948 and this is the look FOHT is shooting for with their renovations.
Speaking of renovating historic buildings, the city is looking into updating the historic Oliver Bath House on 10th Street in the Southside. Built in 1915, actually I thought it had been closed for years, apparently it’s been open. The city is working on a master plan to take on renovations as they can afford them. Window replacement, making it ADA compliant and general mechanical upgrades are all being plotted out.
I deliberately didn’t mention in my blog that I was going to Florida. Since my blog automatically posts on Face book, I didn’t want the trolls to see I was going to be gone. Aunt Claire, is now da kidz second favorite aunt after Aunt Dee, she did a great job dog sitting, da kidz are still talking about her. I spent the first week in Lake Worth, visiting old friends and old haunts. I didn’t plan the trip to coincide with Lake Worth’s famed Street Painting Festival, always a good time. While down in south Florida, I wanted to go to Monkey Jungle, one of my favorites. But they were closed and still cleaning up from Hurricane damage, so we went to the Coral Castle also one of my fave’s. Then I went over to Tampa and hung out with my friend Jeff that owns the Inn on the Mexican War Streets. I like Tampa, but love Lake Worth such a cute little town that hasn’t had the massive build out of so many coastal cities with those 30 story condos blocking everything. Lake Worth has even been successful in not having any fast food places on either of it’s two main street one way east Lake Avenue and west Lucerne Avenue.
Big news is they finished replacing the roof on the mansion, They replaced the main roof and the three small roofs facing the parking lot.
Manchester Craftsman Guild announced their jazz schedule for this year, follow the link to see who they’ve lined up.
Speaking of jazz, they jazz series at The Parador has our schedule it will be in the Ballroom on the third Wednesday of the month in May, June and July. Details are still being worked out hours will be somewhere around 7 to 9:30.
We earthlings have a serious problem with plastics. There’s a huge plastic dump in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, all those plastic water bottles people don’t put in a proper trash or recycling bin, etc flow down the stream out to the oceans and literally tons are collecting in this massive swarm. All oceans have these, but the Pacific’s is the largest. Most people are aware of this. Something that’s getting attention these days is what they call plastic microfibers. They finally banned their use in various cosmetic applications. They also come out when you wash clothes with synthetic fibers (the jury is still out how harmful small amounts of natural fibers are-at least wool will eventually decompose where as plastics are around forever). There are several products out that you can put in you washer that absorbs them and there’s also a contraption you can install on the outflow to capture these microfibers. A big problem with these microfibers is the fish eat them and then we eat the fish. Guppyfriend is the best known, there’s also Cora Ball that they named it because they think it looks like real coral, I think it looks like funny colored Cheerios. 🙂 Both of these run around $30. For $140 you can install the water filter for the waste water called LUV-R that you attach to the water discharge hose.
That’s it for today,
ed
