Pittsburgh

Travel!!!

So now that I'm a free agent again and not spending all of my free time visiting NYC/hosting in Chicago I can go where ever my little brain tells me it wants to go. I am, right now, in the middle of a road trip, live blogging from our nation's capital, jerks, and I thought I'd give you all a little taste of my trip so far.

So Pittsburgh is one of those cities you either from, or go to college to at, or never visit (I think). But I've always been fascinated by the idea of the city of bridges (446 and counting), so decided to give it a go. I mean I can't hold the Steeler's and their dirty style of football or bathroom raping against the town where from they are from, can I? Plus anyplace where they say 'yinz' instead of 'y'all' has got to be pretty interesting...

Museums!!!

So being the art museum nerd that I am, I wanted to check out what Penciltucky's second largest city had to offer. I only had time to visit two out of three of the big boys, sorry Carnegie museum of art, I'll catch you my next time when I have the time to dip to the east end.

The first museum I went to was the Andy Warhol, which would have been amazing if I really dug on Andy Warhol. It was interesting to learn about the Artist's life (his net worth when he died was 220 million dollars), cool seeing some of his more obscure (late) paintings and drawings, rad checking his installations (watching the children play in the silver cloud room was heart warming), and gratifying to check out selections from dude's shoe and leather jacket collection. BUT, Andy Warhol's photography and film, which make up or take up about 2/5ths of he museum, is hackish at best. Sorry, subject matter alone does not make for good photos or films.



The second museum(s) I went to was the mattress factory, which was AMAZING!!! It was worth the visit alone to check out the curatorial spaces, a renovated multi-floored warehouse and a old Victorian house/store front. Highlights included a multi-dimensional exhibit on race and racism in contemporary Cuban art and several permanent installations. The Cuban Race exhibit offered up some of the best contemporary painting I've seen in quite some time if you get the chance check out Pedro Alvarez or Alexis Esquive, do so, you won't regret. My favorite piece of art was probably a room created by James Turrell called Pleiades. Basically a neigh pitch dark gallery, that you approach from a pitch dark ramped corridor, where if you sit and stare long enough you see what appears to be an amorphous sphere of purple and blue that glows and glimmers, shrinking when you eyes try to focus on it and enlarging when you look at it's periphery. The whole experience is major in so many ways- 1) obviously it's a great metaphor for actually finding meaning in works or art, 2) you are forced to let go of your ability to see, which is a litmus test for different personalities, in how you react to this sacrifice (I got quiet, others responded by getting loud and goofy)3. It was a great excuse to let strangers feel you up. Anyway, I can't really say enough good things about this museum, if you are ever in Pittsburgh it is a definite must.


FOOD!!!

You know a gangster had to sample the local delicacies, as they say, when in Rome, right? So everyone I asked, the two people from Pittsburgh that I actually know, recommended that I get a sandwich from the Primanti Brothers. I had the pastrami, which was fried to perfection with a piece of provolone cheese melted on top, stuffed into two choice pieces of Italian bread with greasy/salty hand cut fries and zesty vinegar based coleslaw. I don't have a digital camera, and my smart phone can not muster up the intelligence to let me upload pictures to the web (I don't think) so you will have to settle for a stock photo found on google images (thanks WEBZ!). The sandwich was delicious, I went to the original location, which is nestled in an area of town called the strip, which houses Pittsburgh's remaining food market's, which was a crucial in itself in an old worldy sort of way.




Music!!!

So I went to this crazy record store when I was in Pittsburgh- please peep this video-

It's the type of place you could dig through for days and days, finding all sorts of diamonds in the rough along your way. Also, here is my 6th best album of 2010(*footnote- little josh). It's by a group called, Twin Shadow and it's named, Forget. As I've already rambled on way too long for one blog post I will keep the review short and sweet. Imagine Morrissey-esque vocals with new-new wave musical accompaniment, boom, you got it.