Monday, June 6, 2011

Hi,

Tomorrow’s Dean Martin’s birth anniversary (1917) as well as the French painter Paul Gauguin’s (1848)-did you know he started as a stock broker and in mid life decided to paint and moved to exotic islands to pursue his art.  VCR’s were introduced (1975) and cost $995!  and the day Kentuckians celebrate the day Daniel Boone first saw what became Kentucky with a state wide Boone Day.

They’re having a sale at Rachel Carson’s home at 613 Marion Avenue in Springdale this coming Saturday.  It was the home she was born in and lived in until the family moved to Maryland in her later childhood.  The house fell into disrepair and one of her former teachers bought the home and saved it.  Over the years, the four room house was expanded and period pieces were bought to fill the house.  There is very little, if any thing in the house actually attributed to Rachel.  So they are selling the contents to raise money, the new plan is to return the house to it’s original dimensions and use it as a backdrop telling her story.  Viewing starts at 8 p.m. and the sale starts at 10.  More info at 724.274.5449.

Speaking of auctions, they are selling the antiques my father collected over the years at the Greene County Fairgrounds this Friday.  Behm Auctioneers are handling the sale.  The auction starts at 10 a.m. and I believe there’s a previewing as well.  There is so much stuff, they are doing two separate auctions at the same time.  One for small things and tools and the other for the antiques.  I’ll be out there earlier, but probably won’t be able to stay for the entire sale, since I have a big check in.

The Pittsburgh Food Bank turns 30 on Tuesday.  When it first opened, it was in a few thousand square foot warehouse in the Hill District.  It now occupies a 95,000 square foot green warehouse in Duquesne.  They are celebrating with an open house tomorrow from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m.  If you get a chance, it would be nice if you could stop by to show your support for this very worthwhile organization.

My old stomping grounds, where I got started in Hospitality, Atlantic City is making news, again.  And once again, it’s not good news.  I graduated college and landed in AC shortly after the casinos started opening.  It was AC’s hey day and it was quite the exciting place to work.  Money was no object and food and beverage operations had a pretty free hand getting what ever we wanted.  We were always finding new products and introducing them.  It was a very cutting edge time.  While I was there, two of the mayors went to jail for fraud and corruption.  The casinos were these Taj Mahal’s initially along the Boardwalk and one block into the city, it was slums.  Mistake #1 was to let the reinvestment funds that were supposed to clean up the city line the pockets of everyone that handled them.  Mistake #2 was the city never diversified.  It was mega building casinos and nothing else.  It was truly a one horse town.  I guess they didn’t hear about the gold mining in the old west, Pittsburgh and other one horse towns and how some totally died, some like Pittsburgh has had such a hard struggle to save itself.  Mistake #3 was AC casinos were and are competing with themselves instead of cooperating and competing with the newly legal gambling in the neighboring states.  They’ve had thirty years and plenty of warning.  They seem to be finally trying to diversify the AC visiting experience and the casinos seem to be pulling together to make a united advertising campaign.  How many years has the slogan been around “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”.  And Vegas has been marketing themselves as a group for years before that.  You’d think AC would look to it’s big brother and take a hint.

My final comments today is the purchase of WDUQ by WYEP that takes effect on July 1.  It’s kind of funny who’s buying whom.  DUQ has about 149,300 daily listeners and YEP has about 107,600 (compare this to KISS, the most listened to station in Pittsburgh has around 736,500 weekly listeners).  Also, DUQ is by far the oldest NPR station in PGH, it was founded in 1949.  I think WEP was a country station in it’s former life.  Merging Media CEO Marco Cardamone seems to be the driving force behind Essential Public Media, the company that owns WEP and soon DUQ.  He’s also they guy that owned Cafe Allegro for years on the Southside.  They are switching the format from mainly jazz and news to all news, except for 6 or 8 hours on Saturday nights.  I appreciate jazz, but seldom listen to it on the radio.  I do listen to NPR news any chance I get.  So they will probably be seeing more of me as this changes.

Welp, that’s about it.  Pretty amazing, you don’t hear from me in almost a week and then two times in two days.  🙂

ed