Category: default || By jt3y

Alert Reader Officer Jim wrote in to take note of the helpful new reminders erected (presumably) by PennDOT and the Allegheny County DPW:

Have you happened through White Oak recently? At the intersection of Route 48 and Lincoln Way there are very large signs informing all that they are at the intersection of Lincoln Way and Jacks Run Road. Have I missed something? I usually miss a lot, but I thought it was still Long Run Road.

They are indeed large. Large enough to be read from a low-flying airplane, I suspect, and well out of scale with the rest of the intersection. My tax dollars at work.

The flipside, of course, is that highway signs can be too small. I was in Perryopolis over the weekend and came out of a side street looking for Route 51. Instead of the normal Pennsylvania highway "keystone" shields there was a tiny street sign on a telephone pole, like you'd use in a subdivision: "RT 51."

Other signs that caught my attention --- but which I didn't have time to photograph --- included a "Sinclair" gas station sign somewhere between Connellsville and Perryopolis, more than 30 years after Sinclair stopped selling gasoline in Pennsylvania. Dino still held his head high after all of these years, and why shouldn't he? There wasn't a speck of rust on him, as far as I could tell.

...

I had an appointment Sunday morning in Downtown Pittsburgh (you know, that place a few miles north of Our Fair City). Other than a handful of skaters using the ice rink at PPG Place, some derelicts, and a few people working in fast-food restaurants, I had an area of several blocks around Market Square to myself.

The old Murphy's store is a sad shell of its former self. The sight of it would be enough to make a Murphy man cry. W.C. Shaw and J.S. Mack would spit nails if they saw the flagship of the chain abandoned like that.

But the nearby buildings aren't much better. Someone had chucked a brick through one of the plate glass windows of the old Lerner Shops, and glass still littered the pavement at lunchtime Sunday. The first floor of what was The Bank Center complex is occupied by a "dollar discount" store. Several merchants had piled big stacks of garbage out for collection, but it wasn't clear when collection was going to happen, because the trash had obviously been picked through by the homeless, and scraps of it were blowing into the street.

The shiny new Lazarus store lacks only big floppy ears and a tail to make it look completely like a white elephant, and the busiest people downtown seem to be the graffiti "artists"; I could actually smell fresh spray paint in a couple of alleyways, although I didn't see anyone actually tagging.

A block or so away, I saw parents unloading cars as students at Point Park University returned to the dorms. I can't imagine what moms and dads think about the appearance of Downtown Pittsburgh, and I wonder how many of them arrive in town for a campus visit, turn the car around, and drive away.

An acquaintance who worked in Downtown Our Fair City in the 1970s and '80s, and who works in Downtown Pittsburgh now, says he's starting to get the same feeling walking on Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh as he used to get walking on Fifth Avenue in Our Fair City --- that of a business district in free-fall.

I don't care to speculate on who the next mayor of Picksberg will be. Frankly, I don't have a dog in the fight. But whoever it is will have to stop chasing the fantasy that high-bucks retailers are going to return to the Golden Triangle, and quit building multi-million dollar attractions which stand empty or mostly empty for weeks at a time, like stadia and convention centers.

Instead, the focus should be on creating affordable housing for both young marrieds and retired couples. Get people living Dahntahn --- besides the people sleeping on steam grates, that is --- and I suspect retail and entertainment will follow, organically, and funded by the private sector. Putting some free parking around would help, too (I know, I'm living in a fantasy land).

Oh, and pick up the trash on the weekends, for cripes' sakes. If I want to see corridors filled with piles of old clothes, paper goods and other junk, I'll visit my basement.

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Alert Reader Arden reports that the Los Angeles Times has finally yanked the spectacularly unfunny comic strip "Garfield" from its pages. (He's fat! He hates Mondays! He eats lasagna! Laughing yet?)

According to Editor & Publisher, the Times is trying to "get some new talent" in the comics pages.

Bully for them. I hope they don't cave into complaints, though I some how suspect they will. Next, can someone take "Marmaduke" to the vet and put him out of his (and our) misery?

You know what the joke is in "Marmaduke"? He's a big dog! Hilarity ensues!

Writes Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune, "I only wish we ran the non-adventures of that charmless cat so we could yank the strip, too. What's your least favorite daily strip in the Tribune? ... Me, I can't decide between 'Hagar the Horrible' and 'Broom-Hilda.'"

Oh, Lord, he's right. Those are worse. Don't even get me started on them.

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Signs along Route 30 in North Huntingdon Township indicate that the Sleep Mart location next to Hamilton Buick is closing. Does this mean that Tony doesn't got it?