The McKeesport Recreation Committee asked me to announce:
I saw something in the Valley Mirror the other day that made me laugh. Homestead Borough officials were excited because a bunch of new houses are being built on 13th Street.
Sorry. I don't mean to be a wet blanket, but I laughed.
Yeah, that's just what Homestead or any Mon Valley town needs --- some more houses. If it wasn't for that pesky thing called the U.S. Constitution, it might be a good idea to go through a lot of neighborhoods and tear down every third house.
I know someone in Our Fair City who's selling a house that they've lived in for most of their life, in a neighborhood that was pretty nice not very long ago.
It's still OK, but I'd say it's at the tipping point. Three houses on the street are vacant --- in one case the owner died, and the heirs haven't decided what to do with the property; in another, the owner is in a nursing home. The third is for sale.
By next week, there will be a fourth.
The problem in the fourth case is the house next door, which has been a rental property for almost 15 years. It's currently owned by a limited-liability corporation, which bought it cheap, and they rent it cheap, to whomever can scrape up two months' rent.
They've done no repairs beyond the minimum required. Consequently, they get whatever tenants they can.
The last tenants used the back yard as a garbage dump. With the tenants before them, the grass was usually too high to see if there was garbage there. The current tenants were recently busted for having 15 people in a single-family home.
I am told that the city has been actively involved in trying to keep the situation under control. Code-enforcement has cited the landlord many times. Yet the people I know have decided "enough is enough," and they're moving.
(Personally, I'd be damned if I'd let someone chase me out of my house. But I can't blame them.)
They're listing the house for $45,000, and they'll be lucky to get it --- especially if the prospective buyers visit when the hillbillies next door are sitting on the front porch smoking, drinking and carrying on.
In fact, chances are, some other real estate investment speculator or limited-liability company will buy their house, and rent it for a few hundred dollars a month.
Eventually, after making no repairs, they won't even be able to rent it, and they'll abandon it. If the neighbors are lucky, someone will come along and try to fix it up. If they're not lucky, the house will sit there until the city tears it down, at taxpayer expense.
Chances are at least one of those other three houses on the street that are vacant also will wind up as a rental. And the decline will accelerate as other neighbors give up and move. Lather, rinse, repeat.
That's how you wreck a neighborhood. Wreck enough neighborhoods, and you'll wreck a city.
Take Jenny Lind Street. I went to grade school at St. Mary's German on Olive Street, one block away. Back then, the houses on Jenny Lind were old, but the neighborhood was hanging on.
Walking or driving up Jenny Lind now makes my stomach hurt, and the rot has spread, year by year, block by block.
If I sound frustrated, I am, because I have no solutions to offer, and no observations other than obvious ones.
Bad Joe Pesci movies aside, you can't force someone to live in the properties they own. They have a legal right to rent them.
Although there are health and safety codes that can be enforced, there is no law that says a property has to be attractive, or that you can't rent it to obnoxious tenants.
These aren't McKeesport-specific problems, of course. You can see the same problems in Jeannette, Washington, Beaver Falls or any of the urban areas around here.
They're oversupplied with houses, and the supply increases every time some farm in Union Township or North Huntingdon gets plowed up for another residential development.
We need to increase the demand for the houses we have, and if I knew how to encourage people to move to the Mon Valley, I'd print it up on handbills and pass it out for free. We need to break this cycle.
First we need jobs, I guess, and the new Rite Aid going up on Walnut Street isn't exactly what I have in mind.
And we need some good people willing to take a chance on our communities and make an investment in one of the good older homes around here. Maybe instead of buying a half-acre McMansion for $500,000, they could buy a real mansion (we have a few) for $50,000.
There's no pithy punchline here --- just an attempt to stay positive on a cold and gloomy Friday.
. . .
To Do This Weekend: Hey! Why don't you move to the Mon Valley? We don't lack for amenities. There's country line dancing tonight at the Palisades, Fifth Avenue at Water Street. Call (412) 678-6979. ... Tomorrow, the McKeesport Symphony Orchestra opens its 2006-07 season with Rossini's Overture to La Gazza Ladra, Brahms's Hungarian Dances, Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, and a special performance of a work by MSO composer-in-residence Todd Goodman. That's at 7:30 in the auditorium of McKeesport Area High School, 1960 Eden Park Blvd. Call (412) 664-2854. ... Or, you could twist your blues away with the Pittsburgh Area Jitterbug Club at the Palisades, starting at 8 p.m. Saturday. Call (412) 366-2138.
There's nothing really to add to this story from the Uniontown Herald-Standard, is there? I don't know whether to laugh or cry:
Embattled U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum said America has avoided a second terrorist attack for five years because the "Eye of Mordor" has instead been drawn to Iraq.
Santorum used the analogy from one of his favorite books, J.R.R. Tolkien's 1950s fantasy classic, "Lord of the Rings," to put an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq into terms any school kid could easily understand.
"As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else," Santorum said, describing the tool the evil Lord Sauron used in search of the magical ring that would consolidate his power over Middle-earth.
"It's being drawn to Iraq and it's not being drawn to the U.S.," he continued. "You know what? I want to keep it on Iraq. I don't want the Eye to come back here to the United States."
The 12-year Republican senator from Pennsylvania said he's "a big Lord of the Rings fan." He's read the first of the series, "The Hobbit" to his children (he has six).
But spokesman for Democratic opponent Bob Casey Jr. questioned the appropriateness of the analogy.
"You have to really question the judgment of a U.S. Senator who compares the war in Iraq to a fantasy book," said Casey spokesman Larry Smar. "This is just like when he said Kim Jong Il isn't a threat because he just wants to 'watch NBA basketball.'"
According to a Patriot-News editorial, Santorum said the North Korea dictator "doesn't want to die; he wants to watch NBA basketball" as a reason for why Iran is the bigger nuclear threat.
In the comments to yesterday's Almanac, Alert Reader Bill points out one of my favorite blogs, Josh Fruhlinger's The Comics Curmudgeon: "Comics are mocked regularly, including 'Mary Worth,' 'Rex Morgan, M.D.,' 'For Better or For Worse,' 'Family Circus' and 'Cathy,' among others."
Yes, indeed. Bill also mentions that "Zippy" was sent off to the Pinhead Retirement Home some time ago by the Post-Gazette A Local Newspaper.
Cue Dana Carvey as Johnny Carson: "I did not know that." That shows how much attention I pay to the Newspaper's comics pages; I get most of my laughs from the news these days.
As Bill points out, the Newspaper also tried several new strips lately in place of Aaron McGruder's "Boondocks."
(McGruder, who is my age, recently announced that he was giving up the comic strip, apparently because the strain of supervising a ghost-writer and a ghost-artist to do his work for him was just too much effort. I can understand, Aaron. Personally, I'd like to get someone to press the buttons on the TV remote for me.)
"Of the tryout strips by the Local Paper, I liked 'Lio,' 'Watch Your Head,' and 'Red and Rover,'" Bill says. "'Baby Blues' and 'Over the Hedge' are good but they are already in the Greensburg Astonisher, and in color, so I'd not like to see them duplicated in the Local Paper."
I agree with all of that, though "Red and Rover" leaves me flat sometimes --- I see it in the Washington Post. I've been following Cory Thomas' "Watch Your Head" and Mark Tatulli's "Lio" online since they debuted, and they're both wonderful.
 |  |
|
Deep thoughts from my shallow mind:
First, newspaper readers tend to be associated with an older demographic. Older readers tend to vote more often and for the favorite strips they’ve been reading --- sometimes for decades. Younger readers tend not to participate in comics polls, so you’re left with a skewed result.
Even if you had 90 percent participation from readers, polling is a lousy way to choose a feature. No contributors in any other part of the newspaper are subjected to this arbitrary and unfair practice. No newspaper asks its readers to vote on a columnist or sports writer based on two or three lines of their writing.
Features editors make decisions daily as to what goes into the newspaper, yet they abdicate this responsibility when it comes time to choose a comic. The readership and professional cartoonists would be better served if editors did the job they were hired to do and made the best choice of comic strips for their newspaper.
You are on an archived page of Tube City Almanac.
Click the banner to return to the front page; or click here to visit Tube City Online.
Published weekdays (usually), except holidays (and when we have something better to do) at McKeesport, Pa., by Tube City Online LLC, P.O. Box 94, McKeesport, Pa. 15134.
Opinions expressed here are those of the individual authors, and do not necessarily represent those of any organization. No warranty is given or implied for the information and opinions contained herein; the reader uses that information at his or her peril.
Except where noted, all contents are copyright © 2003-2008 Tube City Online LLC, a limited-liability company chartered in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. No content from Tube City Online may be reproduced in whole or part in any digital or print publication without express permission, except that short excerpts may be used with attribution in commentary or for critical purposes.
Tube City Online is edited by Jason Togyer, member National Writers Union, Society of Professional Journalists, American Radio Relay League and National Radio Club.
Also, objects in Tube City Online may be closer than they appear. If Tube City Online is swallowed, seek professional help immediately. Stop use of Tube City Online if condition persists or worsens. Tube City Online is produced in a facility that also includes Peanuts. Do not expose Tube City Online to open flames and keep it out of the reach of children. Do not back up, as severe tire damage may result. Not responsible for lost or stolen articles. Tube City Online is still not a significant source of saturated fats or Minnesota Fats.
