Congratulations! You’ve graduated from high school and will be furthering your education in the Pittsburgh area. You’ve been bombarded with collegiate brochures. There are dozens of questions bouncing around your brain: “What will my roommate be like? How hard will the classes be? Will I gain the cursed ‘freshman 15’?” There may be another question on your mind: “What is it like to attend school in the Pittsburgh region?”
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The saying goes: There is no such thing as a free lunch (unless you hit your local warehouse club and treat yourself to the samples). While there may not be a free lunch, there are still plenty of free, fun things to do in and around Pittsburgh. The Allegheny County Parks The county parks are a treasure trove of free fun. Throughout the warmer months, the county
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In 1955, a butcher shop opened on East Street on Pittsburgh’s North Side. Sixty years later, that same shop can now be found nestled at the intersection of California and Termon Avenues in Brighton Heights. Tom Friday’s Market has been going strong for decades. The current owner, aptly named Tom Friday, is the third generation of butchers from his family. The store is founded on
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Pittsburgh has a long and vibrant theatrical history. It is reported that as early as 1765, plays, comedies and concerts were held at Fort Pitt. We’ve come a long way since those days, but Pittsburghers still love a theatrical production, and the proliferation of theatrical venues is a testament to that. Below is a list of some of the theaters in our area offering entertainment.
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While the average person on the street may not know Foster’s name today, most everyone can sing a few bars of Oh, Susannah! or The Old Folks at Home (Way Down Upon the Swanee River) even more than 150 years after their publication. Stephen Foster was born on July 4, 1826, to William Foster and Eliza Tomlinson Foster. His father was a prosperous merchant and
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Pittsburgh may be most associated with black and gold, but when it comes to the Irish in the area, they’d paint the city green. Almost from its founding there have been Irish in Pittsburgh. The first arrivals were the Scots-Irish in the 1700s, and then later in the 1800s the Irish Catholics began to arrive. Near the middle of the 1800s, The Great Potato Famine
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Ah, St. Patrick’s Day. Shamrocks. Green beer. Parades. Rubber boots. For Floyd Hughes, my late grandfather, St. Patrick’s Day always reminded him of rubber boots. In March 1936, Pup-Pup, as his grandchild and great-grandchildren called him, was a 21-year-old shipping clerk for Eastman Kodak in Pittsburgh. A husband and father with a 9-month-old daughter, he lived on Spring Hill and took a streetcar to work
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Michael Keaton is a true yinzer. Like his hometown city, Keaton’s career has experienced some ups and downs. His impressive body of acting work has spanned characters as dark as a January day in the city and as workaday as a PAT bus driver. Although a major star, Keaton still has deep Pittsburgh roots. Keaton was born Michael Douglas on September 5, 1951, in Coraopolis,
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There are many things you can call Mark Cuban, but shy or retiring isn’t one of them. Wherever the billionaire and native Pittsburgher goes, he makes a big splash. Entrepreneur and owner of the NBA franchise Dallas Mavericks, Cuban was born in Pittsburgh on July 31, 1958 to Shirley and Norton Cuban, an automobile upholsterer, and was raised in Mt. Lebanon. His grandfather, a Russian
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A dark past remains alive at the Carnegie Library of Homestead. Reports of unexplained noises and ominous figures lead many to believe the building is inhabited by restless spirits. Could the building’s connection to the 1892 Homestead Strike be the cause? The Carnegie Library of Homestead was founded in 1896 to serve a community struggling in the aftermath of a bloody battle. The Homestead Strike in 1892 pitted the steelworkers’ union against
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