Category Archives: Pittsburgh FTW

“This is the most sensual description of eating pierogie I have ever encountered , and I love it!”

Every so often, I post something on the IheartPGH Facebook page that seems to strike a Pittsburgh nerve. The last hyper-popular post that I can remember was about the chipped ham pink nail polish.  I know that there are many of you who aren’t Facebook users so I am reposting this little nugget of Pittsburgh love here for all to enjoy.

Photo credit: Breaking Burgh

Each Friday, there is a post in the Pittsburgh Bloggers Facebook group where folks share links to what they have written over the past week. Last Friday, in honor of Valentine’s Day, Breaking Burgh shared a link to a previous Valentine’s Day post – Pittsburgh Woman Claims The Pierogi Is The True Food Of Love.  One of my personal duties as a Pittsburgher and blogger of Pittsburgh culture is to read every post about pierogi. So I clicked the link, Breaking Burgh has acurately captured Pittsburgh’s love of potato and cheese dumplings. But I thought the following comment was worth sharing.

This is the most sensual description of eating pierogie I have ever encountered , and I love it! It makes me want to beg for more, for more of the luscious butter flowing from my lips as I savor each morsel of delectable hot brown butter! Until my next experience with the ever loving pierogie, I remain ever faithful to its plump mouthful of goodness.

Turns out everyone else agrees and the Facebook post from Friday has continued to receive many likes, loves and shares.

But wait, it gets better! I was just about to publish this post but I thought I better check on the chipped ham pink nail polish availability. Given how popular this post was I’m sure others will be interested. Sadly, this color of chipped ham is out of stock. But to my surprise, the folks at Gridlock Lacquer now sell a church pierogi shade of pink, I need to use an Oprah voice here – A CHURCH PIEROGI SHADE OF PIIINNNNKKKKK, which thankfully is still in stock and can be yours for just $9.00 + shipping.

And now, a word from our sponsors…

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  • Looking for a way to sweat of some of those pierogi pounds? Download Zenrez and save big on last minute fitness class signups. Everynight at 9pm, Zenrez posts classes for the following day at spinning, yoga and fitness studios around down at a discount. Click here to get $10 in free Zenrez credit.

 

Why We Need More Pittsburghers on the Train (and at the Table)

The MTP at the Denver, Colorado Station.

The MTP Train at the Denver, Colorado Station.

All Aboard. This post provides some background on my participation in the Millennial Trains Project and details for the MTP info session which will be held in Pittsburgh on Monday, February 1, 2016 at TechShop. Scroll to the bottom for the info session details.

This is one of my favorite topics to write (and talk about). There is so much more to share about this experience than I can pack into one blog post, each person I met, place I visited and each train car deserves their own post. So I hope this is a start to many more conversations on this topic.

Lets talk about trains, and ideas and Pittsburgh. One of the many valuable things that I have gained from the readers of this blog, was the opportunity to participate in the inaugural Millennial Trains Project in the summer of 2013. Not only was it an incredible personal experience to travel across the US on a vintage train, but it allowed me to bring many ideas back to Pittsburgh and share more of the Pittsburgh story with other leaders. And I am proud to report that we have had a Pittsburgher participate in the Millennial Trains Project each year.

What is the Millennial Trains Project?

Hard to sum up in one sentenance, MTP is a cross-country train trip, where some impressive, creative young leaders spend a week travelling across the country, with an amazing group of mentors, learning about great things happening across the US. Each passenger crowdfunds a project that they work on and research as the train moves from city to city.

A Tale of Two Patrick Dowds & The Generous Readers of IheartPGH

Outside of Grand Junction, Colorado. One of my favorite photos from the trip.

Outside of Grand Junction, Colorado. One of my favorite photos from the trip.

Years ago, I worked on political campaigns, and I had a Google alert set up for pretty much every elected official, including then city-councilman Patrick Dowd. Most of the time this Google Alert sent me links to a blog of some Canadian man named Patrick Dowd and I started deleting the emails before I read them. One night, I couldn’t sleep and was flipping through all of the emails in the not-so-important email file and I saw an article about another Patrick Dowd. Trains Patrick Dowd, had been a Fulbright Scholar in India and had participated in the Jagriti Yatra, a cross country train trip in India. Trains Patrick returned to the US and wanted to create a cross country train trip here. Even better, the first MTP journey was scheduled to stop in Pittsburgh.

I had just a few weeks to crowdfund my project to join the trip. I blogged, I emailed and I Tweeted. Thanks to the generosity of Pittsburghers from across the US, I was able to participate in the first cross-country train trip.

Not only did Pittsburgh make it possible for me to participate in this trip, but many people helped to make the Pittsburgh stop a great experience.  The passengers visited both ThrillMill and TechShop. And a huge thank you to Scott Smith from East End Brewing, who with less than 24 hours notice agreed to host all of the train passengers at the brewery for a happy hour.

Why We Need More Pittsburghers on the Train (and at the Table)

Not only was a cross country train trip via vintage rail and incredible experience, but it was an important learning experience for me that we need to make sure we have more Pittsburghers at the table telling the stories of this city to other young and not so young leaders. I wrote an essay titled “Five Things I Brought Back From My Cross Country Train Trip” that I shared with those who donated to my crowdfunding campaign.

Here are the highlights and you can read the entire essay here.

  1. Pittsburgh Needs More Third Places
  2. Innovation Beyond Startups
  3. The Value of Breaking Good Bread Together
  4. Lets Talk About Leadership Training
  5. Pittsburghers Need to Talk about Pittsburgh, Outside of Pittsburgh

I hope you will take the time to read the whole essay and I welcome your thoughts and feedback in the comments on the page.

The MTP 2016 Trip Starts in Pittsburgh

An exciting opportunity to show off our city to an incredible group of “passengers” from around the globe, in 2016 MTP will run two trips, one of which will start in Pittsburgh!

mtp-2106

MTP Pittsburgh Info Session – Monday, February 1, 2016 @ TechShop

MTP-2016I will be joining Matt Verlinich & Catherine Tsavalas who have also been passengers on the Millennial Trains Project at TechShop on Monday for an information session about the trip. Please come and learn more about how you can participate in the 2016 trip.

I am committeed to helping other Pittsburghers who want to participate crowdfund for their trips.

If you are not able to attend, but have questions, please feel free to send me an email lindsay – at -IheartPGH.com and I would be happy to help.

MTP Information Session
Monday, February 1, 2016
6:30-8:30pm
TechShop Pittsburgh, 192 Bakery Square Blvd. 15206
Please RSVP here. Facebook Event page here.

Applications are open now and close when enough people have reached their crowdfunding goal or April 15.

Arriving in Pittsburgh by Train

One of the most iconic, well at least my favorite views of Pittsburgh, is coming into the city from the airport, the view of the city unfolding as you come through the tunnel. I have on more than one occasion, driven through the tunnel and been so captivated by the lights of everything, that I immediately change course and drive to Mt. Washington to take a photo.

So, the day that the MTP train was scheduled to arrive in Pittsburgh, I set my alarm to wake up and see what the city looks like when you arrive by train. I know that I won’t often be coming into the city by rail and wanted to see what it looks like.

Here is the video of what Pittsburgh looks like when you arrive by rail.

home made pierogi

“every day is pierogi day, in pittsburgh”

National Pierogi Day

I was browsing the Pittsburgh subreddit which is a great place to find out about local events, news and interesting facts about this town. There is a post about the fact that Thursday, October 8 is National Pierogi Day. I don’t know who created National Pierogi Day or why it is in October. I come from a family that is pretty serious about pierogi making, I associate pierogi with the holidays, especially January. I do know that the lone comment on the Pittsburgh subreddit explains how most Pittsburghers react to National Pierogi Day: “every day is pierogi day, in pittsburgh.”

There isn’t much information about National Pieorgi Day online.  There is a Facebook page here. In Pittsburgh the only event I found for National Pierogi day is at the casino, which I don’t even think is worth linking to.

ihp-beer+pierogi

Quite possibly the best possible idea for a food pairing event, ever.

Next week, there is a pierogi & beer dinner in Braddock at The Brew Gentlemen with Casey Barber – author of book about pierogi @GoodFoodStories, author of the book Pierogi Love.

If you are looking for some pierogi gear, sadly the Commonwealth press store is sold out of the pierogi pillow, but Garbella has some pierogi attire for Pittsburghers of all ages.

How do you plan to honor the pierogi on national pierogi day (or every other day of the year)? Where are the best pierogi in Pittsburgh? Share your pierogi thoughts with #everydayispierogiday.

more pierogi reading…
kinograph

Techburgh: Show and Tell with Code & Supply

This Monday, local Pittsburgh software community, Code & Supply gathered some of their best and brightest in the old Paramount Film Exchange (now a co-working space) to show off what they’re working on.

Matthew Beatty (@beattyml1) gave the developers a tour of his code generation suite called “Codgen“. This little library lets programmers speed up ShowAndTell211their development by helping them generate the same basic code architectures in a way that works on Android, iOS, the web, and anywhere else a developer wants to target, without forcing them to rewrite the same code again and again.

On the softer skills side, Marie Markwell (@duckinator) shared her new blog project, Inatri. Businesses gather personal inforShowAndTell212mation and interact with the public in ways that can rapidly become problematic. After a personal disaster involving her private information being abused to harass her, and interactions with businesses which misgendered her, Marie decided enough was enough. She assembled Inatri as a place where businesses could received guidance on how to gather personal information and use it in a way that respects and protects their users.

Her key point is that the personal biases and assumptions of developers can and does “leak” into the software they develop.

Matthew Elper (@kinographCC discovered a very different problem. While traveling in Jordan, he discovered thousands of film canisters of Jordanian cultural history- and no one knew what was on them or what how to preserve them. He put together his own home-made film digitizer, using off-the-shelf parts, and discovered lost footage of the previous king of Jordan- an act that drew the attention of the current king.

ShowAndTell213Digitizing film is expensive- it’s roughly $1,000 per reel, and standalone machines cost upwards of $250K. Small archives, universities, and libraries simply can’t do that, and so Matthew started the Kinograph project, an open-source platform that uses cutting edge computer-vision software, mixed with off the shelf (and sometimes 3D-printed) hardware. You can follow the instructable for the hardware (although Matt recommends holding off- he has a cheaper, easier to build version in the works), and the get the software from GitHub

His project’s been featured in Make Magazine, and he’s looking for collaborators who are passionate about saving cultural history before it’s forever lost.

Finally, Jackie Vesci (@JVesci) came with her startup project, Tagalong Tour. This project is a passion project among friends that offers walking tours of Pittsburgh, with audio guidance. They’re still experimenting with ShowAndTell214what makes a great tour, but they’ll help you “Meet the Neighbors” in East Liberty, find the highlights of public art in Downtown, or play the best pinball in Lawrenceville.

iPhone Screenshot 2They’re looking to expand their tours, and grow their user base- which is growing at roughly 10% a week. You can check them out at the next OpenStreets, where they’ll have a Karaoke booth, and you can download the app and try it out yourself.

It was a great night to see what’s going on in the Pittsburgh tech scene. If you want to get involved, join Code & Supply on Meetup to learn about these events. Their monthly Build Night is a great place to meet and network with technical folks, and if you’re not a technical person, don’t worry! They have a #StarterSeries event every month, which will get you started. The next one is July 25th, and will cover a key design pattern for building software.

Pittsburgh’s RedRaven Studios one of 25 Artists at NASDAQ for Etsy IPO

Congrats to Amy Hamley, a Pittsburgh artist who runs RedRaven Studios, who was one of 25 artists from around the globe that joined the executives of Etsy.com in Time Square today to ring the opening bell in honor of Etsy’s IPO.

https://instagram.com/p/1jD69ySMdu/

Canyon Series: Bryce Hand Painted Porcelain Espresso Mug with 14K Gold Luster

Canyon Series: Bryce Hand Painted Porcelain Espresso Mug with 14K Gold Luster

RedRaven Studio has been making porcelain jewlery and home decor in Pittsburgh since 2006. You can purchase RedRaven’s wares on their website, from Etsy and at the annual Pittsburgh craft marketplace Handmade Arcade.  RedRaven was also one of the artists to have their items included in the LOCAL collection at West Elm last fall.  Last year, Amy was also the first artist mentioned in the New York Times article about Etsy ‘s expansion into the wholesale market.

Learn more about Amy and see some of the other beautiful RedRaven items in this post by DesignCrush (and I just learned that DesignCrush is also a Pittsbrugher)!

Follow: @RedRavenShop @Etsy

Read more about the Etsy IPO…