Category: default || By jt3y

Regular readers of this Web page (both of them: hi, mom!) know that I like nothing more than a good display of Mon Valley chauvinism. True residents of the Mon Valley may disagree on many things --- high school football, Steelers quarterbacks other than Terry Bradshaw, the merits of Iron City Beer --- but we are united against our common enemy: Pittsburgh. We may be on the treadmill to oblivion (to steal a phrase from Fred Allen), but at least we're all walking in the same direction.

That's why this Pat Cloonan story in Friday's Daily News did my pollution-contaminated heart good:

An aside to Charles Betters: Keep the name "Pittsburgh" alongside "Palisades Park" if you get that race track license for Hays. So said McKeesport officials who said they have been working for months to assure that, when people think "Palisades Park," they look to the Twin Rivers, not the Three Rivers.

"I would like to secure the Palisades name for McKeesport," Councilwoman Ann VanKirk Stromberg said at this week's McKeesport City Council meeting.

"We're going to be filing with the Department of State (in Harrisburg) to reserve the name 'Palisades Park,'" (Solicitor J. Jason) Elash said. "We've had this intention since the beginning of the year."

By gum, if Our Fair City can stick it to Pittsburgh on the Palisades Park issue, then I'm delighted. We have a strong claim to the name "Palisades" --- it's been on the Palisades Ballroom at least since the 1920s.

Pittsburgh may have some things that Our Fair City doesn't --- three allegedly professional sports teams, a skyscraper or two --- but they've got a symphony and we've got a symphony. They've got a library and we've got a library. They've got a fountain downtown and we've got a fountain downtown (McKeesport has two fountains downtown, actually, neener neener neener). They've got a bunch of Fortune 500 companies and 325,000 residents, and we've got ...

Well, we have two fountains downtown.

And lots of free parking! So there! Ha!

(More badly-scanned photos of Mon-Yough scenery are available here, by the way.)

In other news, Dennis Roddy of the Post-Gazette (a newspaper up in that city to the north of Our Fair City, and I don't mean Duquesne), speaking to an interviewer from Columbia Journalism Review, has a solution for attracting Western Pennsylvania residents to the presidential campaign:

TL: Everyone's looking for the essential swing group this election season. Who do you think the Steelers-fan vote is going to go for?

DBR: It's going to go to the first candidate with the good sense to hold an open rally and post a big sign that says "Free Beer."

Hell, yeah! I'll vote for the candidate who offers free beer. Um ... gee ... no one's going to tell the LaRouchies that, I hope. (Link via Perfesser Pittsblog.)

In the Tube City Almanac mailbag, last week's mention of the passing of the publisher of the Jeannette News-Dispatch tickled the memory of an Alert Reader who has asked to remain anonymoose:

If there is anything that distresses me more than the passing of local radio as once known in so many area communities, it is the passing of local newspapers as once known in so many communities --- something I was reminded of the other night ...

We were passing a state liquor store built after the old Messenger building burned down some years ago. The Daily Messenger was a great newspaper for a town that once was a colossus of steel, but it started to decline even before the Homestead District Works declined. A strike in the late '60s accelerated the process, which ended with a daily going weekly, then dying, then being revived in the early 80s as a weekly News Messenger, then dying again on a day when the publisher told me to shut down my obit writing duties and go home, the paper --- and several other weeklies the woman and her husband had bought --- went bankrupt.

The Valley Mirror was one of two efforts to keep a community news medium going in the Steel Valley. One-time Messenger editor Earle Wittpenn founded the Mirror. He continues to write a column even though he sold the paper some years ago (to a gentleman who later swallowed whole the old Free Press of Braddock, circulating the Mirror now to both Steel Valley and Woodland Hills communities). The other effort was a cable TV newscast, still done monthly on Adelphia Channel 7 by former Munhall Councilman Bill Davis ...


The list of deceased publications also is enough to send someone off the Grays Bridge (or, if you prefer, the Mansfield Bridge, or any other span around McKeesport).

As many Alert Readers know, I am a regular reader and fan of the Valley Mirror (or "Valley Smear," if you prefer) and I never miss "Earle's Pearls" (even if Earle Wittpenn and I couldn't be more politically different). I used to particularly love when Wittpenn would run on the front page a list of the names and addresses of subscribers whose subscriptions were about to expire --- a tradition the new publisher, Anthony Munson, hasn't continued.

The Mirror also carries Jim O'Brien's sports column. O'Brien has had a few nifty ones lately.

My rant about tagging --- and the subsequent response from Alert Reader Bob --- prompted a reply from Alert Reader John:

I realized that I'm the exact "whippersnapper" mentioned by Bob. Small world, huh?? I distinctly recalled having the argument with him, one on one, about the recent (then, anyway) capture and arrest of "mook." I won't go into details, but rest assured, points were argued that really don't make any sense now ...

I've gone from an immature 22 to an ever-more cranky 26, and I'm going to admit my idiocy. Yes, taggers are among the scum of the earth, though I do believe that I have seen some out-of-the-way murals that could qualify as art. Keep in mind though, that what I'm talking about has nothing to do with the use of Sharpies, and does not concern domestic dwellings, signs, or other property generally accepted to be "owned" by some person.

On a side note, I've enjoyed the little bit I've read on your site. As a fellow McK (Grandview, fyi), I can identify with a lot of the stuff that pisses you off. I guess that's good.

Geez, I don't know ... I appreciate the nice comments, but anyone who agrees with me too much would benefit from heavy therapy, and perhaps some mood-altering drugs. And if those aren't handy, Stoney's or Straub usually works for me.