Rosedart's Fliers and backdrop featured in the Pittsburgh Post gazette

Living with it, sticking with it: GLUE'burgh part 2 (Updated)
by Diana Nelson Jones/Sept 18


In the last post, I stated that Pittsburgh is sexy the way Paris is dirty.

What I mean is that "dirty" isn't the first thing anyone who hasn't been to Paris at least a few times would ascribe to Paris, just as "sexy" isn't the first thing anyone would ascribe to Pittsburgh unless he or she just gets it. A lot of people walk awash in Pittsburgh's sexiness because they have fallen deeply in love with it or been sucked in by its wiles, guiles and anti-styles. Other people get it because they delight in the quirky, the iconoclastic edge, the spurs and doglegs of our city streets, the honest gutsiness of its old-timers and the freakin' fantastic set of 712 outdoor stairways.

People who get it: The same people are intrigued by parallel universes, such as Alice's rabbit hole and Kinsella's infinite baseball game.

So many people want Pittsburgh to hold them because they love it. We now have as many former Pittsburghers as we have Pittsburghers, and they live all over the world. Germany, Arizona, Tangiers, Lichtenstein, the D.C. Beltway, St. Pete, Atlanta, Texas, Cranberry... and they devour our local news on-line, having wanted this city to hold them, too. Their love was a labor of contradiction: They couldn't live with it but they can't live without it.



The Great Lakes Urban Exchange (GLUE) is gearing up to inform public officials of the conditions under which its members would stay if.... and the reasons why they are staying put for now -- in Detroit, Cleveland, Buffalo, Pittsburgh and a few other cities.

Visit www.gluespace.org, where you will see a lot more than this intro:

Want to take the "rust" out of "Rustbelt"? Are you an advocate? A neighbor? A voter? A dot connector? The Great Lakes Urban Exchange needs your help to answer the question: what's right and what's wrong about my post-industrial city?

Join the movement for a “Rustbelt” Renaissance here on GLUEspace and via GLUE's offline activities in your sticky city. Become a member, tell your story, and help us collect, cross-pollinate, and replicate good ideas. Welcome to the mega-regional family.

Detroit's GLUE had its party in June. Pittsburgh GLUE held its "I Would Stay If..." party at the Shadow Lounge in East Liberty last night. It was one-part cocktail-mingle, one part workshop. About 120 people came and 75 of those chose to be photographed.

At every GLUE party in every Rust Belt/Lake Effect city, participants are being photographed holding their written responses to "I Would Stay If..." and "I Am Staying Because..."

The photo in this post (I know, it's too dark but hey...) is of Sarah Rubin, 27, executive director of the Hillman Center for Performing Arts in Fox Chapel. She held an "I Am Staying Because..." poster that read: "I am staying because I believe each neighborhood should have its own means of art." Obviously, she believes she can have some impact on that happening.

"I do," she said brightly. "I'm in a wonderful position to work with arts groups in many neighborhoods. I work with the African-American Music Institute in Homewood, the Neighborhood Academy in Garfield, and I can work with kids on how they wish to see themselves in the world."

Sarah, you are a re-enlivening person who makes me glad to be alive in the 'burgh.

Next, you will meet Michelle Coker, Melissa Osiecki and Carrie Hagan, but before I begin deliberating on the next installment and take care of a lot of other pesky chores of the workday, I want to leave you with the message on a flier I saw at the Shadow Lounge last night:

"The NAJP presents...We aren't waiting for the politicians! Change begins in Pittsburgh! Love, Rosedart."


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Posted Sep 18 2009, 11:05 AM by Diana Nelson Jones