4th of July Weekend Fun - Quickly Solved by Zipcar

I have been a Zipcar member for a few years.  I can’t say enough about how much I like Zipcar – it a great service if you just need a car sometimes or if you need to borrow a larger car or truck for an afternoon.  Cars are easy to reserve and use, the customer service is great and very helpful.  The Zipcar I was using this weekend got a flat tire.  I don’t blame Zipcar for this – I am cursed with flat tires, car breakdown or some situation that involves a plumber on a holiday weekend.  The good news is that all I had to do was call the 800 number and they took care of the rest.  I no longer needed the car – I had reached my destination before I noticed the flat and they actually just towed the car away (they offered to change the flat for me).

How does Zipcar work?

Image via CrunchBase

Once you sign up at Zipcar.com they mail you a membership card. That car is your “key” for driving future vehicles.  When you need to borrow a car, visit Zipcar.com and reserve the car you want to drive.  Zipcars are parked in different locations around the city and there are all different types of Zipcars from sedans to minivans.

Walk over to your reserved car and hold your membership card over the drivers side of the windshield.  This will unlock the car and they keys are located in the car.

You pay for Zipcar by the hour or by the day.  The hourly/daily rate includes gas and insurance.  Once you are done with your trip.  Park the car where you picked it up, leave the keys inside and hold your membership card over the windshield to lock the car and end your reservation.

Use Zipcar Anywhere

Once you are a Zipcar member you can drive any of the Zipcars in any state.  I have used Zipcars in Pittsburgh, Los Angeles and Baltimore.  Your membership is good anywhere Zipcars are located.

The Car Diet

Each summer, Zipcar invites a group of drivers to take the low-car diet.  If you are selected you agree to give up driving your car for a month in exchange for a Zipcar membership and driving credit.  It is a fun way to try navigating the city with out your own car.  I have participated in the Zipcar Low Car Diet last summer – I learned that I like walking to work and that driving isn’t the fastest way around town. Plus they planned some fun events and had some nice giveaways for the low car dieters too.

If you are interested in signing up for the low car diet – fill out this form here.

Join Zipcar

If you are already sold on the Zipcar idea – click on our handy referral button below and get $50 in driving credit.

Some more reading on Zipcar:

• ZipCar surprises and delights customers with lagniappe (customerthink.com)
• Zipcar shares soar in market debut (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Zipcar IPO Soars 66% Out of the Gate (blogs.wsj.com)

The Feast of Saint Anthony Festival
Sunday, June 12, 2011
1:30pm-Dusk
21st and Smallman in the Strip
http://www.stanthonypgh.org/

The Feast of Saint Anthony Festival has an amazing line up this year:

• delicious Italian foods, music, and dancing all day
• Mass in Italian at 3 PM at St. Stanislaus Church at 21st and Smallman Streets followed immediately by the
• Procession with the Statue of St. Anthony down Penn Avenue returning on Smallman Street.
• Zambelli fireworks
• music by Bon Journey

Win a Trip to Italy!

As if the food and Bon Journey weren’t enough incentive to get you out of the house on Sunday.  They have an amazing raffle.  Tickets are $10 and the proceeds benefit St. Stanislaus Kotska Church in Pittsburgh’s Strip District and the festival.

2 round trip tickets to Italy (or $1,000 cash in lieu of the tickets). The second prize is a time share in Ft. Lauderdale, FL for a week. Each raffle ticket has 2 four-digit numbers on it. The winning numbers will be based on the Pennsylvania Lottery Big Four Drawings on June 13, 2011. The matching midday number will be for Second Prize. The matching evening number will win the Grand Prize of tickets to Italy. Each ticket has 4 chances to win a prize!

What about those shoes?

You could win those too.  A pair of custom-made Chuck Taylors, like those that appear in the poster – will be put up for a nationwide auction. The winner will Walk with Saints every day they wear them.

Image via Wikipedia

Today is Tuesday, May 17 and that means it is primary election day here in Pittsburgh.

The polls are open from 7am-8pm.

Click here for the Allegheny County Polling Place Locator

Who Should I Vote For?
The folks at Progress Pittsburgh have put together a big table with candidates for most of the city and county races that includes information about which candidates have been endorsed by the Post-Gazette, Planned Parenthood, P2pac, Allegheny County Democratic Committee and other groups.  The table also includes links for more info on each of the candidates.

Did some one say party?
Yes, most canidadates will be hosting some sort of celebration after the polls close this evening.  Here are the events that we know of (h/t Progress Pittsburgh for compiling this info in one place).

• Darlene Harris – Billy’s Troy Hill Bistro, 1720 Lowrie St.
• Bruce Kraus – Green Front Inn, 2341 East Carson St.
• Lucille Prater-Holliday – The Montage, 201 N. Braddock Ave.
• D. Raja – Greentree Radisson Hotel
• Rich Fitzgerald – IBEW, Hot Metal Street
• Chelsa Wagner – Gaetano’s, 1617 Banksville Road
• Valerie McDonald Roberts – Tonic Bar and Grill, 971 Liberty Ave.
• Doug Shields – Doug Shields’ Campaign HQ 5800 Forward Avenue
• Patrick Dowd – Church Brew Works, 3525 Liberty Ave

Tweet About It – #votepgh
We will be following election day – all day on twitter – please tweet about election day and use the hash tag #votepgh

Image by alykat via Flickr

Feeling inspired by Heinz Ward’s recent success of dancing with the stars?  Pittsburgh has lots of beginner friendly places that offer dance lessons.

• Swing Pittsburgh – offers swing dancing lessons every Saturday night at 8pm, with a DJ or Band and dancing from 9pm-Midnight
• Absolute Ballroom – offers group and private lessons 7 days a week
• Ballroom Pittsburgh – offers ballroom dancing lessons every Thursday night at 7:30pm, with a dance from 8:30-11:30pm

What do you think? Have you taken dancing lessons here in Pittsburgh?  Where did you go?

photo copyright Jennifer Baron

Local movie theater lovers rejoice! Thanks to a group of volunteers – Friends of the Hollywood Theater – the Hollywood Theater in Dormont will be reopening this spring.

May 4th – The Hollywood Theater will host a screening of the PBS documentary The New Metropolis.

Looking forward The Hollywood Theater will host the 48 Hour Film Festival, Rocky Horror Picture show and many other community events.

Determined not to lose another single-screen theater, a group of local movie-lovers, area residents and community leaders banded together to formulate a strategy to reopen the beloved Hollywood. The result was the FOHT, whose mission is to reopen the theater not only to show movies, but as a community center where the public can enjoy movies, film festivals, concerts, and special events such as big screen viewings of sporting events and the Academy Awards. The FOHT hopes that reopening the theater will add to the vitality of the Potomac Avenue business district, Dormont, and the entire region.

Check out the Post-Gazette article on The Hollywood Theater here.

They are working on updating the website – www.TheHollywoodDormont.org and you can follow the Facebook page here.

Here are some great photos of the interior of the theater (interior photos are copyright Fred Terling):

You can learn more about The New Metropolis here.  I think this will be a really interesting film that addresses some issues that Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas are dealing with.

Here is the trailer:

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Allegheny County library system is, in this writer’s humble opinion, the greatest single asset the Pittsburgh region can boast of. The libraries are an inexhaustible source of entertainment, knowledge, and wisdom, and because all of the libraries are now connected and materials can be requested from any library within the system, travel expenditures are limited to the library that is most convenient for one to access.

I would estimate that 99% of the novels I have attempted to seek out are contained within the system. With non-fiction, excepting extremely “niche” and academic publications, the rate would be somewhat similar (as an example, although I could not locate Robert Carringer’s book on Orson Welles’ version of “The Magnificent Ambersons,” given that it is tailored for a very limited audience of film historians and Welles buffs, I was able to track down dozens of other books relating to Welles and the film in question).

Media is somewhat less easy to track down (as might be suspected), but one might be surprised at the obscure and otherwise hard-to-find titles that are contained within the library system. Back to Welles, although “Chimes At Midnight” and “The Magnificent Ambersons” were unavailable on DVD (both being foreign-only releases), I was able to find every other major Welles movie on DVD, some in their “deluxe” versions (three-disc editions of “Touch of Evil” and “Mr. Arkadin”). Given that most of Welles’ non-”Citizen Kane” work is all but unknown to the general public, this is a reassuring situation.

In general, the libraries seem to be very good at keeping up with new releases; if you don’t want to spend the $6.50 for a movie ticket and can wait the ten or so months it will take for the movie to be released on DVD, the library to acquire a copy (or 75), and one of those copies to make its way through the holding queue to you, this is an excellent way to save money.

Oakland Branch:

The main branch of the Carnegie library system, located in Oakland, is a monstrosity of a building. Spanning two floors and an almost ridiculous array of side wings, narrow hallways, and “submarine rooms” (i.e., rooms that are as compact as, well, a submarine), a map is almost required in order to navigate the building and to locate whatever text or media one may be pursuing.

Main’s collection is so massive that the Library of Congress filing system is used, making it something of a challenge for readers used to the more common Dewey Decimal System. In fact, casual browsing is extremely difficult at the Main branch, simply because the collection is so overwhelmingly large. That said, if specific titles or subsets of works are desired, the Main library is an invaluable resource. While other libraries may have, at best, a handful of texts on a given subject, the Main library might have an entire bookcase stuffed with relevant information.

The library even contains a Depository, which contains a wealth of journal articles and other academic resources; as one might expect, viewing these materials requires a bit more legwork than simply walking into the library and finding the appropriate shelf. Instead, a formal request must be filed.

Of course, with the online request system, the contents of the Main library are essentially accessible from any library within the Allegheny County system (save materials in the Depository and some other restricted materials). However, the ambience of the Main library is unique; the architecture, the reading areas, the winningly schizophrenic atmosphere as one traverses through different rooms (take a visit; you’ll understand). It can be entertaining to simply walk around the library, even if one doesn’t intend to pick up a book or flip through the endless drawers of CD’s. Simply being faced with that sheer volume of material can be inspiring, in an odd way.

Open Your Own Business – First up, the Union Project is accepting proposals for their cafe space.  If you are a long time reader of this blog you know that I am a huge fan of the Union Project and was a frequent visitor of their cafe.  For a variety of reasons the cafe at the Union Project has been closed for the past year.  Now the Union Project is accepting proposals for a new tenant to run the cafe space.  The Union Project, located at the corner of Stanton and Negley Ave in East Liberty, is a former church that has been transformed into a community center.  The church offices have been rented out to other businesses and artists, the former sanctuary is a large event space available for rentals and the basement is a ceramics studio that offers classes and open studio hours.

For the right cafe this is an ideal space – there is lots of parking on the street, the location is right in the middle of a walk able neighborhood and the coffee shop around the corner is always crowded. More details on the cafe space at the Union Project are available here.  Proposals are due on December 3, 2010 and the Union Project will start interviews in January, decisions will be made in February and you could be running your own shop by spring.

Manage a Waffle Shop/Talk Show – Opportunity number 2 is a little different – maybe you aren’t ready to start your own business but you are looking for a chance to run a creative project and get good benefits.  The Waffle Shop is looking for a restaurant manager.  You get to manage and maintain the restaurant side of things.  The Waffle Shop is a project of Carnegie Mellon University – the waffles and food are part of a project that gets people in the door on a busy corner in East Liberty and interacting with an online talk show.  The students and community are always “cooking up” interesting programming for the shop.  This is a project of Carnegie Mellon University – which comes with health and other university benefits.  Learn more about the job here.

Related articles

• How to Start a Small Cafe Business (thinkup.waldenu.edu)
• Urbanophile, Waffle Shop and NaNoWriMo (pittsburgh.metblogs.com)
• Conflict Kitchen Writing Cookbooks For a New Age (editionsballard.wordpress.com)