Author Archives: Lindsay

About Lindsay

Lindsay has been writing about Pittsburgh since 2005. She likes pretzels from the Pretzel Shop on Carson St., used book stores, her rollerblades and she hopes to learn to skateboard someday soon.

Volunteer Here: 2024 Albright Thanksgiving Eve Dinner

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If you have been a long-time reader of IheartPGH, you know that this is one cause I support each year.

The Albright Thanksgiving Eve dinner is a free community meal that was first organized by a Boy Scout Troop that met at the Albright United Methodist Church in Bloomfield. Members of the Albright congregation and members of the community have kept this tradition going and 2024 is the 50th Anniversary of the Thanksgiving Eve Dinner.

2024 Thanksgiving Eve Dinner Details

  • ️ Date: Wednesday, November 27, 2024
  • ⏰ Time: 5:30 PM
  • Location: First United Methodist Church Social Hall 5401 Centre Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15232 (Enter above the Pittsburgh Toy Lending Library)
  • All are welcome to attend!
  • The dinner is completely free. Just show up.

Volunteer Information

Looking for a place to volunteer? Come join us!

We need help with cooking, serving, dishes, and lots more. Families are welcome to volunteer.

Check out the 2024 Albright Thanksgiving Eve Dinner FAQ for more info.

Want to help? Fill our the Friends of Albright Volunteer form.

Donate!

You can help support the Thanksgiving Eve dinner by making a contribution to the Friends of Albright GoFundMe page. (I am one of the founders of Friends of Albright. Friends of Albright is a project of New Sun Rising, and all donations made to Friends of Albright through the GoFundMe page are tax deductible.)

Help me reach the goal of 50 donors!

I have set a personal goal of getting 50 different people to donate to the GoFundMe campaign in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the meal. If you would be willing to donate $5 or $10 (or more!) that would be great!

YinzVote.com: Pittsburgh specific election information

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YinzVote.com is a little website I’ve put together to share nonpartisan, Pittsburgh-specific information about voting.

Why Pittsburgh specific election information?

  1. Information for Pittsburghers. There are so many websites about the election. So much information. Most of it is good. Some of them are great. Some of the sites are not so great. Information is being shared at the national level, at the state level and at the county level. The Pennsylvania Department of State is doing an amazing job sharing election information online. (Please make sure to follow @PAstatedept on Instagram.) The information Pittsburghers need is at the county level. For example, the state and national websites do not always have specific information about where Pittsburghers can drop off mail-in ballots before the election.
  2. Searching for Pittsburgh information. If there is one thing I know from almost two decades of blogging about Pittsburgh, it is about Pittsburgh search info. Almost every single election-related website says “Allegheny County,” but most people sit down and search where they live. If Yinz Vote can help one voter searching for info get to their polling place, then the site was worth it.
  3. Black & Gold >  red or blue.

Black & Gold > red or blue.

Yinz Vote stickers

About a month ago, I was sitting on the patio at Cafe Raymond in the Strip District, feeling a little distraught about the state of things in the world. It was the perfect Pittsburgh Sunday morning. Sunny, unseasonably warm, and Penn Ave. was crawling with Steelers fans decked in their best black and gold. (Ok, there were a few Cowboys fans on the street, too. )

Seeing the sea of Steelers fans gave me some hope. Earlier in the week, I was listening to a podcast about how it would take an act of war to bring the country together. I thought there has to be another way to bring people together.

And I am grateful to have been born in Steeler Country. Even if you aren’t a fan of the game of football, you can enjoy the community of Steelers fans. When I tell someone I am from Pittsburgh, and they ask me if I am a Steelers fan. My answer is, of course, that I was born into it, and I say I am a fan of the fans. 

So, I’ve been thinking about the upcoming election. If you live in Pittsburgh, you can’t not think about the election.  Then I was listening to a podcast about pre-suasion, which talked about the importance of unity.

I phoned a friend and asked, “How do we make this election fun.” Thankfully, as Pittsburghers we have sports teams to bring us together. Even if you don’t love the sports, it is hard not to be a fan of the fans. 

So, Yinz Vote was born. This election has been something. Pennsylvania, living up to its name as the keystone state, is the key to this election.

Please follow & share Yinz Vote with your friends

 

Help Serve A Free Thanksgiving-Eve Dinner

Thanksgiving, well Thanksgiving-Eve, has become my favorite holiday of the year. I’ve posted about this a few times over the years, so I will try to summarize…

In 2012, I was asked via a Facebook post from a friend to volunteer to serve food at a free Thanksgiving dinner. I had no idea when I walked into the kitchen, that I was walking into much more than a dinner.

In 2014, this is what I posted to Facebook after volunteering at the Thanksgiving-Eve dinner:

There are so many amazing people in this city that are Pittsburghers. Sometimes I am lucky enough to get to spend some a few moments with those people. Tonight, I helped a friend clean up from the community dinner that has been organized at the Albright United Methodist Church since the 1970s. The volunteers were led by a man that is 75 and has worked at Ritters for over 40 years. Earlier this year, he left Ritters and now works at Dennys. Today he cooked 9 turkeys and all of the fixings. Tomorrow he will feed 35 people at his house, then go to work at Dennys at 5pm. I have helped with the clean up for this dinner for the past 4 years and never had the chance to hear this story. I’ll gladly wash the pots and pans, and mop the floor any night of the week if I get to spend time with Pittsburghers like this.

On top of that, another kind Pittsburgher saw my post on Reddit about volunteering a the dinner and showed up to volunteer with out having heard of me or my blog. He had taken a quiz on Facebook and learned that today was his 10,000th day alive. To celebrate that, he spent the evening helping a few strangers.

That is just a little slice of Pittsburgh for you.

This year is the 45th Annual Albright Thanksgiving-Eve dinner. It is a free meal, cooked and served by volunteers. The guest are neighbors from across the city – some are hungry, some are lonely, some are there to take home some turkey to eat on Thanksgiving.

Help make the 45th Annual Albright Thanksgiving-Eve Dinner a success

1. Spread the word! Please invite your friends, neighbors, community groups and anyone else in Pittsburgh who needs some food & fellowship to attend. Here is a Facebook event you can share.

2. Donate $10. I’ve set a goal of getting 45 people to contribute to the GoFundMe in honor of this being the 45th annual meal. Click here to donate to the GoFundMe page (Friends of Albright is a project of New Sun Rising). We’ve just crossed the half-way mark and it would be great to get 20 more donors before next week!

3. Volunteer. This meal is 100% volunteers from the cooking to the cleaning. I’m incredibly proud that thanks to volunteers we are now able to use real plates and silverware and have significantly reduced the amount of trash that we produced when the meal was served on paper plates. Sign up to volunteer here.

The 2019 Dirty Dozen Bike Race is this Saturday, October 26

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One of my favorite things in Pittsburgh that I think more Pittsburghers should know about is the Dirty Dozen Bike Race.

The race is usually held the Saturday after Thanksgiving, but for 2019, the race has been moved up a month to October!

I’ve updated all of my old posts with new information over on Very Local, everything you need to know about the history of the race and being a spectator is all right here.

We’ve also published a video about Jeremiah Sullivan, he’s the guy who has successfully completed the Dirty Dozen race on a Healthy Ride Bike.

You can watch the video here, on YouTube or Facebook. (PS – we are always looking for more Pittsburgh stories to share over on Very Local. Have a story idea? Send me an email lindsay.patross@verylocal.com.)