Tag Archives: Blogs

Have a drink with Littsburgh next Tuesday!

Writing is a lonely activity. Reading is solitary pursuit. That is why Littsburgh is hosting an inaugural happy hour next week to bring those who share those two isolated passions together.

LittsburghLogoLittsburgh, a website launched by a trio of booklovers in August, is designed to connect the literary community in Pittsburgh.

The website is a hub for booksellers, authors, media outlets, and nonprofit organizations who share a love for books. Littsburgh hosts a calendar of author readings, book signings, and posts sample chapters of new books.

“We love Pittsburgh and we know the scene is awesome,” Said Rachel Ekstrom, Littsburgh co-founder. “But we want the world to know, we want people to think of Pittsburgh as a literary destination. This site is a big tool for that.“

Pittsburgh is a social city and one of the top 10 literary cities in America (according to one of those random rakings).

Ever since the launch of the site earlier this year, eager readers have been asking when they’ll host an event. They answered with an email this week:

Citizens of Littsburgh, please join us at Spirit Lodge (242 51st Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15201 – http://www.spiritpgh.com/spiritlodge/; CASH ONLY) on Tuesday, November 10th from 5:30 to 8:00 pm for $3 drafts and $10 cheese pizza! Pin a limited edition Littsburgh button to your jacket, tell us if you’re reading or working on anything good, and — most importantly — join us in raising a frosty glass of I.C. Light to literary Pittsburgh!

Ekstrom and her Littsburgh co-founders Katie Kurtzman and Nick Courage each have backgrounds in publishing. All three re-located to Pittsburgh from New York City within the past year or so.

”What struck us is not just the wonderful writers and books that come out of Pittsburgh, but there’s publishing professionals. Katie is a book publicist, Nick is a book marketer and author. I’m a literary agent,” said Ekstrom.

She says there are book jacket designers, editors, literary magazines like Creative Nonfiction, wonderful non profits like City of Asylum. That’s on top of the numerous writers, MFA students and professors, independent bookstores, chain bookstores, university bookstores, comic bookstores, publishers, libraries, little free libraries, zines, university presses, poets, journalists, and author readings…the list goes on.

“As a literary agent I want a bird’s eye view of the whole scene here,” said Eckstrom.

She and co-founder Nick Courage conceived of the website. Courage put it together and operates it. He says Pittsburgh always felt like a literary town and that the overwhelming positive response to the website proves it

“It was gratifying. It was something that was already in the air, “said Courage, who is constantly updating the site with people submitting book events and links to book related organizations.

Just this week there are 12 events on the calendar, and 30 book-related events in the area so far for the month of November.

“There are pillars, like the Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures series to living room readings,” said Kurtzman. “Hopefully people who only go to small things will start going to the big stuff and there will be cross pollination.”

The three of them plan to use their connections with New York publishing scene to bring more attention to Pittsburgh in the form of author tours and big-name author signings.

They say perhaps down the road it can grow into something bigger.

“If this leads to, perhaps, a wonderful world-class book festival that’s set in Pittsburgh. If other opportunities arise for the literary scene, we would love to be a part of that and make that happen,” said Ekstrom

For now, the site is a labor of love and runs no paid advertisements. They told City Paper in September they’d consider ads that were literary-related.

“We know Pittsburgh has great football, and great technology, we have this cool food scene emerging,” said Ekstrom. “A lot of people know Annie Dillard or Michael Chabon, August Wilson, and David McCullough, but there’s so much beyond that too.”

Littsburgh is a great place to start exploring the literary scene, big and small, blossoming across Pittsburgh.

Bucs Blog Round-Up

Last week, I made my introduction to the blogging world by posting a bite-sized rant about Pittsburgh Pirates fandom. I regret nothing.

Now, though, it’s time to get down to business. In the grand tradition of Myron Cope, Pittsburgh sportswriters remain some of the most intelligent and opinionated in their field and, with the exponential growth of Internet, so too have Pittsburgh sports bloggers grown, both in number and in opinion. Since Pirates bloggers are perhaps the most opinionated of the bunch, and since good journalism is essential to any good fan’s understanding of their team, I feel obligated to deliver to you at least a sampling of the finest the Internet has to offer, in terms of Pittsburgh baseball.

 

General Knowledge

Baseball without statistics is like peanut butter without jelly, or a shopping cart without a broken wheel. If you head down to PNC Park and don’t hear about Pedro Alvarez’s slugging percentage in the last 20 day games at home, ask for your money back. What’s that? You don’t know what a slugging percentage is, you say? Perfect. Check out these websites and be enlightened.

 

Baseball Reference

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Baseball Reference covers all the bases (no pun intended), providing information from a player’s batting average to his place of burial (if applicable). What’s more, the site provides formulas for the more complicated statistics, which can be found by simply hovering at the top of a column. Regardless of what you’re looking for, though, Baseball Reference is the place to start.

 

FanGraphs

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FanGraphs reads more like a blog than Baseball Reference does, and tends to cover a lot of straightforward baseball stuff (Here’s an article about The Pleasures of Team Allegiance, which probably does more convincing than I could ever hope to). Still, there’s a twist. FanGraphs is representative of the growing camp in baseball journalism that supports a larger integration of advanced statistics, called sabermetrics in analyzing how the game works, (see Moneyball for more information, or the book for even more information) which has ruffled the feathers of baseball “traditionalists” the world over. Stay tuned for news of a new world order, but in the meantime, let’s transition to the main attraction…

 

Pirates Blogs

This is where we get specific. Any knowledge that you might acquire in the above websites can be used to better understand the blogs that follow, and likewise, you can use stats and facts to keep certain bloggers honest. Not that you’ll need to use your new superpowers on Pirates bloggers—those guys are on your side. Instead, cross-examine scheming Reds and Cubs bloggers, who might be trying to show you up.

 

Bucs Dugout

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A member of the SBNation network of blogs, Bucs Dugout is managed by Charlie Wilmoth, and covers late breaking news from the Pirates’ front office, (trades, free agent signings, etc.) as well as provides gamethreads for fans to comment on games in progress, and recaps past games. Additionally, the writers at Bucs Dugout often open the floor to fan submitted posts, photos and links.

 

Pirates Prospects

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Formerly B.U.C.C.O. Fans.com, (where B.U.C.C.O. stands for Bring Us a Championship Caliber Organization), Pirates Prospects is managed by Tim Williams, and is mostly concerned with the MLB draft and Pirates’ minor league system. Williams and company emphasize that the children, and not the current big leaguers, are the future of the organization.

 

Where Have You Gone, Andy Van Slyke?

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W.H.Y.G.A.V.S.? derives its title from Pat Lackey’s understandable frustration with the team following its collapse in 1992, and the veritable disappearance of superstar players like Van Slyke. Recently, Lackey has had slightly less to be upset about, as the light at the end of the tunnel draws ever nearer, but he, like many other Pirates bloggers remain cautious about getting too excited for the team.

 

Raise the Jolly Roger

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Brian McElhinny has a phenomenal Twitter presence, and, in addition to writing daily posts about the Buccos, can be seen to tweet the popular hashtag, “#RaiseIt,” whenever the Pirates get a win. Though the call to raise the Jolly Roger has become strongly associated with Pirates’ broadcaster Greg Brown,  McElhinny deserves some praise for personifying the enthusiasm that Pirates fans can have for their team.

All of the bloggers discussed above, plus many other writers, can be found on Twitter, and have been compiled in a Twitter list for your convenience.

 

Music Lover? Check out BurghSounds for all things music in Pittsburgh

Thanks to Lesley (aka  Plum For The Road – a great photo blog with lots of Pittsburgh photos) for the heads up on BurghSounds.com. Looks like a great resource for Pittsburgh music news, upcoming concerts and videos.

Are there other Pittsburgh music blogs we should know about?

Links Worth a Look – April 7th

Here are some links/articles/blog posts that are worth a look:

  • Restaurant Review: Soba – Pittsburgh Magazine – April 2010 – Pittsburgh, PA – Another positive review for a great Pittsburgh restaurant – Soba. Pittsburgh Magazine has an new review of Soba including info about the chef and new menu items.
  • Salt of the Earth – Chef Kevin Sousa will be opening a new restaurant "Salt of the Earth" on Penn ave this summer – he has been posting some update on the restaurants blog about how things are coming together.
  • Salt Themed – Earth Day Dinner at the Cafe at the Frick – A few years ago I discovered sea salt (thank you to costco for including the sea salt with the pepper mill) and so this salt themed dinner caught my eye. On Thurs., April 22, chef Seth Bailey and his staff at The Café at the Frick will host the restaurant's first-ever Earth Day Dinner, which will feature a tasting menu of four courses and dessert based on the theme "Salt of the Earth." Check out some of the interesting items on the menu
  • Banff Ticket Giveaway! : Venture Outdoors – The Banff Mountain film festival is coming to Pittsburgh April 9+10 – Venture Outdoors is giving away tickets daily on Twitter! Check out this blog post for details.
  • Buena Vista Coffee: A tasty touch of Hollywood in the Mexican War Streets – Nice little article from Pop City about Buena Vista Coffee – the former Beleza Coffee shop has been re-opened with a new name and a new look. The shop was used in the filming of the movie "Love and Other Drugs" – in the movie Ann Hathaway works in a coffee shop.
  • Public=Online | The Public Square Project – Last week the Sunlight Foundation – a national organization focused on increasing government transparency – kicked off their new campaign "Public Equals Online" with a panel discussion at the Google offices in Washington DC. The panel included Ryan Hopkins, from Pittsburgh, who is the founder of the Public Square Project – a local effort to building an online hub of information about Pittsburgh government and public policy.

Follow IheartPGH on Twitter – we share more links there almost daily!

Dozen's Summer Cupcake Preview Party = Free Cupcakes

DozenSummerMenuFlierIf free beer isn’t your thing, how about free cupcakes.  This Friday, March 26 – Dozen will preview their new summer cupcake menu with a FREE cupcake tasting party at their Lawrenceville location.  You can find info about all 5 Dozen locations here – http://www.dozencupcakes.com/

Dozen cupcakes sells cupcakes and lots more – including rice krispie treats (a personal favorite), cookies, brownies, brunch and more.  Currently Dozen is in the lead on Boring PGH’s cupcake poll – Dozen vs. Coco’s.

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