Diversity has a Pittsburgh problem, and it's not the hills

The Central Outreach Wellness Center has an admirable mission:

We offer PrEP and free STD testing in Pittsburgh and SouthWestern Pennsylvania.

Central Outreach Wellness Center is a holistic multicultural, LGBTQIA, and HIV & Hep C health organization. We strive to be the leading provider of culturally competent care in Allegheny County.

I don't know anything about COWC, or how well they deliver on their promise. But I'm pretty sure they're on the positive side of the Evil-Good spectrum. If we didn't have a resource like COWC, we'd need to invent it. Yesterday staff found this bit of hate-paint on their logo:

Homosexual as % of Pop.

How well is Pittsburgh doing about accepting homosexual people? There's a 2015 list of US Metro areas ranked by percentage of gay population. Pittsburgh isn't at the absolute bottom of the list, thanks to Birmingham Alabama - but we're next to the bottom.

This week, poor (mostly minority) tenants are being displaced in East Liberty to make room for new residents who will pay more. Pittsburgh: keeping the gentry in gentrification.

Last week, at least 8 armed police officers in Wilkinsburg killed a black man with a pocketknife, after he stabbed the police dog they'd set upon him. The policy say the scenario started because he was drinking beer from an open container. The container has not been introduced as evidence. Similarly, Jordan Miles was beaten by three police for a MountainDew can in his jacket pocket; the soda can was never introduced as evidence.

In the last two few months, Hispanic businesses (in Brookline & Beechview) have had racial-hate paint on their locations and a rock in a window. Not surprisingly, another 2015 report shows Pittsburgh near the bottom of racial diversity measurements. In fact, Pittsburgh's diversity was 227 out of 230 cities studied.

But if you talk to people, you'll find out: Pittsburgh doesn't have a diversity problem. The Irish and the Italians get along. We've got a lot of Asian students at CMU. No way: Pittsburgh is great, welcoming, very Places-Rated. Most people see Pittsburgh as tolerant.

Diversity, on the other hand, has a Pittsburgh problem. The cops, the government, the market, the housing, the transit, the hiring, the slurs, the beatings: Pittsburgh is not generally a friendly place to be non-white, non-CIS, non-Het, non-monied. Read Clare Polke (formerly of the P-G) about why she's leaving.

To be sure, there's a spectrum of hostile outcomes. Spray-paint on a logo, rocks through windows, eviction, being shot 12 times - they're not equivalent events. But to me, a white-cis-het-guy, they're an indication of the swirl of ugliness and intolerance that's continually in play, and I only see hints of it from my privileged persepective.

Why does Pittsburgh have statistically outlying, low measurements of gay and minority people? Here's a hint: it's not that those folks don't like hills. It's that Pittsburgh doesn't like those folks.

One last data-set, for those who respond to quantification and research:

Scared of Sarah; Carnegie is the next Lawrenceville

Saturday night I went to see a play in Carnegie - and left thinking that Carnegie is poised to be the next Lawrencevile.

My wife Karen and I went to see Scared of Sarah at the Carnegie Stage's Off the Wall Theater (website).

The three-actor plot begins with: Lily is putting husband Sam through college. They might be upwardly mobile and successful but it's tenuous; financially they're on the edge. Lily's older sister, Sarah, has a high-functioning autism that sometimes people don't recognize.

When Lily and Sarah's father dies, Lily steps into a semi-guardian role for Sarah. When Lily has an unexpected pregnancy, she fears that the child may be autistic (since her sister is) and struggles with the potential challenge.

Family differences, lost and found journals, past history and uncertain futures, security and dreams, all come into play in a deft, tightly woven narrative. This was an excellent play, in a great theater, with wonderful performances by the three actors: Erika Cuenca, Shaun Cameron Hall, Sara Silk.

One of the three characters has autism, but she's not "the autistic" as much as she's a character with autism along with her other dimensions. I have to say that Sara Silk's performance as Sarah was the best of the evening; a lot of physical work and an excellent portrayal without falling into caricature. All three actors turned in excellent performances. The play just shot forward and never let go.

The theater is a smaller house, very comfortable and accessible. I was really impressed that this was going on in Carnegie; this set, music, lighting, and performance would have easily stood among the downtown performances. (In fact, Ted Pappas was seated in the row behind us.)

The Off The Wall Theater has it's own key points: at least half of the plays are written by women, at least half of their plays are directed by women, they pay union wages starting at $15 to give their people a living wage. Twice a week they offer women a Gender Equity discount of 28% to reflect the disparity in incomes by gender.

"Scared of Sarah" was written by Laura Brienza, directed by Ingrid Sonnichsen, an Associate Professor at CMU.

Lots of folks talk about: What's the next Lawrenceville? and I think it's going to be Carnegie. First: it's located on the I376 Aerotropolis Artery, and I79. The other pleasant surprises I've had in Carnegie recently were brunch at Bakn and dinner at 131 East Main. Looks like an excellent coffee shop on the East Main Street plaza. Just saying.

Avoiding Accountability via the Wartime Dialectic of Civilian Death

I was never fond of diagramming sentences, but it has it's place. There's a wave of statements being made in Pittsburgh in the aftermath of a driver causing a chain-collision and killing a cyclist. The statement goes like this:

•It's tragic (Susan Hicks) was killed ,but I know a lot of cyclists run red lights.
•It's sad (the cyclist) is dead ,but I see a lot of (them) behaving badly. I ride bikes too!

Here's the pattern:
•{regret}  (individual)  [outcome]  ,but  {credibility}  (many) of  [other- tribe]  misbehave.

{regret}	(individual)	[outcome]	,but	{credibility}	(many)	[other- tribe]	misbehave	assertion of balance
{It's a shame}	(Fireman Jones)	[died]	,but	{we all know}	(many)	[firefighters]	drink too much	Some of my friends are firemen.
{How sad that}	(Johnny Gammage)	[died]	,but	{my cousin the cop says}	(the majority of)	[black drivers]	have drugs & guns in the car.	I do support the 2nd Amendment though.
{How sad that}	(Andre Gray)	[was murdered]	,but	{I know that}	(so many)	[homosexuals]	live a risky lifestyle	Some of my friends are gay.
{What a loss,}	(13 year-old Abdel Rahman Abdullah)	[was killed by soldiers]	,but	{we all know}	(a lot of)	[Palestinian kids]	throw stones at soldiers.	What do they expect?
			,but

And we could go on with other examples. It's pertinent to note that the [other- tribe] is always a group that the speaker does not belong to.

What these statements really say in code is:

The

death killing beating [outcome]

of

Susan Hicks Johnny Gammage AR Abdullah (Individual)

is

acceptable justified understandable OK

because

(many) of [other- tribe]

drink a lot drugs-guns live risky throw stones {behavior}

This is a pernicious bit of rhetoric. It says: What happened to the individual is understandable and not-outrageous because of the way their tribe acts. It says: taking innocent, uninvolved individual lives can be justified by the behavior of other members of their tribe.

The only time Occidental Culture is supposed to justify individual deaths because of tribe-group identity is during warfare. How did we come to this?

Why do we tend to devalue the loss of life based on membership in another tribe? Why do we invoke the rhetoric pattern of warfare in civilian deaths? Because then we don't have to hold a member of our own tribe accountable for it, which would reflect on: ourselves.

Business Meets Personal: Next Pittsburgh As Mesh City

The Old School was pretty clear: business was business, and personal was personal. An interesting sociopolitical question was raised by this week's focus on Lyft-Uber and The Sharing Economy. Used to be (U2B) you were a Consumer or a Producer; now you're a Consumer and a Producer. Sometimes, mixing previously unmixable categories is too hard to think about, it's disturbing and even revolting. Maybe we're prosumers (thanks to C.Briem !)

The lines between business and personal seem to be collapsing, and with any change there's winners, losers, angst and noise.

Your car, which used to be a private vehicle, is now sometimes also a kinda-taxi (except it's not, wink-wink) but you do carry passengers for hire. A few quibbling points:

• Some people have CDLs (commercial drivers licenses), some don't
• there are difference insurance and inspection requirements for commercial vehicles
• there are different parking and zoning implications for personal vehicles
• in some cities, commercial vehicles can only use certain roadways
• commercial drivers face drug testing

You build a wonderful home theater in your basement. Big, big screen. Stadium seats for fifteen, tremendous sound system, serving table for food. You've had friends over for ballgames and movies for years. Now, you're having paying guests over for Netflix and Steelers games. You're doing the same thing as you used to do, but you're charging for it. Funny thing is, all the licenses for your content are strictly for not-for-revenue personal, non-commercial use. Fughedaboutit.

Zoning. In an attempt to structure our cities and counties in accordance with the public desire, we enact zoning laws that designate what kinds of development are permitted. Some places are zoned for personal residences, some places are zoned for business, some places are zoned joint use.

Hotels. I love hotels, I get the NYTimes and they've got a pool. But now there's AirBnB and my neighbor has transients traipsing in and out because he's sharing his guest bedroom. We're zoned for residential, but wow: brave new world.

Drones. You can go out and buy some really cool drones and quadricopters, and you can outfit them with some really cool cameras. You can fly them in a lot of places (but not around DC). The rules say you can only do this as a personal activity, you cannot do it for commercial use; you can't do it for compensation. Wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

Taxes: Personal purchases pays sales tax; commercial use doesn't. That's not trivial; start messing with personal and commercial and the entire tax structure is in play. (Ask Al Capone about taxes) Note how states are now collecting Amazon taxes and cities are focusing on AirBnB scofflaws.

Finance: Personal banking, Business banking: very different things.

How did we come to have such clear schisms between personal use and business use? What are the truly essential safeguards that we need to convey into the future, to ensure public safety from malefactors? How much of the commercial legislation is defending incumbents and restricting competition and innovation, and how much is protecting the public from blackguards and the extremes of capitalism?

What are the implications of tearing down those (anachronistic) distinctions? Because the Mesh isn't going to wait for the old rules to change, it's going to unleash creative destruction and swamp the unprepared.

Locally, it seems like Pittsburgh is going to be a Mesh City, which could be #FunToWatch, what with winners and losers n'at.

One could assert that Pittsburgh is uniquely positioned for the business-personal amiguity, blessed with the mullet: business in the front, party in the back. In the end, everything comes full circle to Yinzers.

Vehicular Bullies and a Failure of Decency: Pittsburgh's terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week

Pittsburgh is a nice place to live and a good place to be a bicyclist; in fact, Pittsburgh has received a Bronze Award as a Bike Friendly Community (BFC). This last week was a terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad week of death and crime (but no punishment). For those unfamiliar:

• Monday 7/30, Pittsburgh held a memorial ride and a ghost bike ceremony for James Price, a diabetic bicyclist run over by a driver and left to die alone on the 7500 block of Penn Avenue (fatal hit-and-run).
  
• Tuesday 7/31 the driver of an SUV ran over bicyclist Anthony Green, on the 7700 block of Penn Avenue, and stopped after hitting a phone pole. Mr. Green died of his injuries. (fatal collision)
  
• Wednesday 8/01 the mayor's office urged people to be careful and said an alternate bike route would be developed to get bikes off Penn Avenue.
  
• Wednesday at Church Street and South Braddock in Swissvale, the driver of a truck hit a bicyclist and drove away from the scene. (non-fatal hit-and-run) Update: Intoxicated bicyclist ran a red light and ran into back of a truck. Driver didn't know, continued driving, returned when another motorist alerted him.
  
• Thursday 8/02, a motorcycle police officer was riding Penn Ave. in response to the accidents. He was hit by the driver of an SUV. Uniformed policemen, official vehicle, blinking lights.
  
• Friday 8/03, Driver flees scene after striking 6-year-old child on a bicycle in the 200 block of Alter Street, East Carnegie. (non-fatal hit-and-run)
  
• Saturday 8/04, another cyclist hit by a driver in a hit-and-run, in the 2200 block of Perrysville Avenue in Perry North. (non-fatal hit-and-run)

Bicycle Apartheid and Vehicular Bullies

In the immediate response to the first two deaths on the same road, there was discussion of moving bikes off that street and of establishing alternate bike routes. Two widely different perspectives were communicated:

• Here's the key quote from coverage of the Mayor's statement:

  After two bicyclists died after being struck by cars in recent days, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl's office urged bicyclists to consider avoiding a section of Penn Avenue that runs through Point Breeze and Wilkinsburg.
  The mayor's office said bicyclists should consider exiting Penn at at Braddock Avenue and continuing to Meade Street. Pittsburgh has no legal authority to restrict bicycle traffic on Penn, a state-owned roadway.

• An alternate view was expressed by PennDOT:

  "Motorists need to remember that bicyclists are extremely vulnerable," Steve Cowan, safety press officer for PennDOT District 11, said. "They have as much right to the road as you do in your car or in your truck or on your motorcycle."

Bicycle apartheid or removing bicycles "for their own good", is illegal, repressive, and rewards bullying behavior. Smells like "separate but equal".

Policy FAIL: Appeasing Bullies with Segregation for the Victim's Own Good

At a meta-level, this is an issue of responding to bullying. Will appeasing bad actors by segregating their victims help?

In Atlantic Cities, Sarah Goodyear writes about the objectification and diminishment of women, and attempts to protect women for their own good by establishing women-only train cars in India, Mexico, and Japan.

A woman writes that when she boarded a mixed-gender car, a man started crowding her suggestively. When she asked him to step back, he replied, "Why are you here? You should be in the women’s coach." She asserted her right to travel on the mixed coach, and things escalated.

Another man stepped in and got into a fistfight with the first one. The other passengers started yelling at the woman, blaming her for the problem. It was her fault for being there. Simply by being female in a public place, she had caused violence. She needed to go away.

The shaken woman ended her account this way: I’m AGAINST the separate coach for women. It is the most ridiculous solution the government came up with to ensure women travelers’ safety. Segregating men and women will never help anyone develop tolerance and respect for others’ PERSONAL SPACE.

Neither, I would add, will segregating cars and bikes.

Economic Patterns of Bike Friendliness: It's My Fault

I ride in Pittsburgh a few times a week: on the trails, on the streets, wherever. I am in the target demographic. All the new bike infrastructure and the associated bike friendliness have been deployed in places most likely to attract Me: the riverfront trails, the sharrows to gentrified neighborhoods with hipster cachet, coffee shops and cupcake boutiques — it's all about me. It's my fault.

The distribution of bike friendliness has followed the existing patterns of economic success and power, and that (unintentionally but nevertheless) mirrors patterns of race and class.

So our bike friendliness isn't evenly distributed. None of these accidents happened in the white-bread areas that have benefited from the attention of the last decade; they've occurred in the shabbier places that don't make the brochures.

It's a matter of essential decency

This last week shows that as a region (the incidents fall in several municipalities, but all are in the same County) we've lost the sense that there's a human being on that bike/motorcycle/walker, and being in a rush isn't worth killing somebody. There's a philosophical/moral problem at the root of it.

Certainly, there's a need for education, law enforcement, road calming etc - but there's a failure of decency.

America's Most Livable City? The only thing guaranteed in Pittsburgh is charges

First, a cognitive palate cleanser of sorts, in the hope of warm-booting the normal filters and opening a port to a new datasource:

We're Number One:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the Pittsburgh region has the highest rate of poverty among working-age African-Americans of any of the 40 largest metropolitan regions in the country.

. . . .

Even more shocking is that the Pittsburgh region is No. 1 in the country in the rate of poverty among African-American children under age 5.

(Post-Gazette)

---

Welcome to America's Most Livable City
Please ignore the invisibles with me
See Pittsburgh rebuilt it's economy
But we still lead the Nation in black poverty

Welcome to America's Most Livable City
Just ignore the invisibles with me
And state ya business, cause here the place ya living
depends on ya race and privilege

They call it Clipsburgh Pistolvania
Where block dictators will launch missiles to bang ya
Where hot metal come whistling out the chamber
To maim ya twisting you like wrestlemania
And what's crazier the bishop wont pray for ya
Ya families so poor they can't even afford a crate for ya
And in them skyscrapers Brah they can't wait for us
To move out the hood so they can take it lace it up
Transit cuts a brother can't even take the bus
This is the ugly truth no need to make it up
Then some magazine comes along and places us
As most livable in the USA what?
Say what? Guess they didn't survey us
Cause life is cut shorter than razors where they raise us
Judges are racists and quick to hang us
And police taze us until we never wake up


Welcome to America's Most Livable City
Please ignore the invisibles with me
See Pittsburgh rebuilt it's economy
But we still lead the Nation in black poverty

Welcome to America's Most Livable City
Just ignore the invisibles with me
And state ya business, cause here the place ya living
depends on ya race and privilege

And downtown it's a bunch of new buildings
Glass and steel cathedrals the cost a few million
They make billions to treat a dudes illness
With medicine and pharmaceuticals so who's dealing
But the schools are failing screw children
Just make sure the office has a see through ceiling
Pitt University and CMU killin
classes cost thousands I don't see you fill em
How we gonna get a job in biotechnology
if all we ever learn is survival psychology
and why we so poor if yall revived the economy
but we don't get nothing besides an apology
Tear down the projects and put up a Target
then build new homes so they can stimulate the market
But move us out the neighborhood so we can never harvest
the only thing we guaranteed in Pittsburgh is charges


Welcome to America's Most Livable City
Please ignore the invisibles with me
See Pittsburgh rebuilt it's economy
But we still lead the Nation in black poverty

Welcome to America's Most Livable City
Just ignore the invisibles with me
And state ya business, cause here the place ya living
depends on ya race and privilege

Fix 2.0 : Solutions from New Pittsburgh and the Creative Class

Local businesses that can be said to represent "new Pittsburgh", rather than the brick-and-mortar "Olde Pittsburgh", converged for a adhoc meeting at Nadine's on the SouthSide to discuss what they could do to keep the obviously crumbling Pittsburgh infrastructure - as demonstrated by Friday's four deaths due to drowning in rain - from affecting their "Burgh 2.0" operations.

The meeting started with CMU ex-pat Dr. Richard Florida, speaking on an iPad via Skype, who cautioned that "the creative class, Your City 2.0, sits on the foundation of traditional city services and infrastructure. Once you start drowning people in the rain, the creatives will be out of town on the next MegaBus, kiss them and their tweets goodbye". The waiter serving the table interrupted to say, "You know MegaBus has wifi, right?"

Scott Bricker, executive director of Bike Pittsburgh, suggested that the nearby Washington Blvd. Bike Oval could be a resource. "If we stored a dozen of these bike-boat kits at the Oval, in times of emergency riders could use their bicycles to save cagers motorists from killer rainfall."


The Sandcastle spokeperson chimed in, "We have a core competency at distributing flotation devices, like the heavy-duty tubes for the Lazy River. We could open a booth on Washington Blvd, ready to hand out tubes whenever it begins to rain."


Michael Cohen, co-owner of Just Ducky Tours, said "with the right incentives, we could establish a ticket office and boarding facility in Highland Park. During normal conditions, we'd target people who on Zoo trips and proceed down the boulevard to the Allegheny River. During non-standard conditions such as rain, we could keep our fleet in reserve to support rescue operations."


Dawn Keezer, Director of the Pittsburgh Film Office, brought an unexpected nugget: "We've been contacted by a well-known local documentary film-maker who wants to shoot a movie about Pennsylvania floods, both historic - think Johnstown - and in the current time."

She said, "Rick Sebak, who you all know from WQED and "Stuff That's Gone", wants to film a documentary called "Rain and Floods". He's asked that we take no action to disturb the current situation, because he'd like to capture the conditions as they exist, today. He'd like to begin filming whenever it rains."

At this point, Richard Florida (who had been listening) asked, "But when it starts to rain and Sebak and his people start filming... How do you handle the logistics of that?"

"Exactly", said the Film Office honcho, with a knowing smile. "Whenever the rain starts and they begin to film, we'll immediately close the streets - because we can close streets for filming.".

Richard Florida said, "It's the perfect creative class win-win paradox! I think you should go with it". After a consensus recommendation of the Film Office's approach, the meeting convened with a flurry of twitter updates and messenger bags.

The Duty of Fair Representation

The Big Lies insidiously drive discourse into foul perfidy, presenting themselves as obvious truths (if only the people had the eyes to see), and moving the boundaries of acceptable conversation further and further toward their paymaster's purposes.

One of the techniques of the modern Big Lie is dropping small truths and reasonable questions into the stream of messages; these unobjectionable tidbits provide a foothold for unaffiliated voices to join the discussion designed by the Big Liars, unintentionally contributing a bit of momentum and credibility to the scurrilous campaign.

In the recent discovery Big Lie that public employee unions are the perpetrator of every known problem, some legitimate questions about unions have been raised. A reasonable theme (expressed by worthy bloggers and commentors) is that Unions would fare better if they choose their battles with more wisdom; in other words, Unions would get more support if they used discretion and avoided supporting their more egregious members.

It's a good question. Why do Unions support every member, even if it's onerous or unwise? The answer comes out of a 1941 Supreme Court decision regarding racism, railroads, and unions.

The history of organized labor and racism is no better than the American history of racism. A union was formed to represent railway workers, the union excluded blacks, and the union was recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent. A black man named Bester William Steele had lost his job in 1941 over the Union's racial bias. He filed suit jointly against the Louisville and Nashville Railway Company and the Brotherhood of Locomotive Enginemen and Firemen. He charged

that the Union "had refused to represent the Negro fireman fairly and impartially, had been persistently disloyal and hostile to them, had sought to destroy their vested seniority rights, and to drive them out of service", and because the Union enjoyed Congressionally conferred exclusive bargaining power, these violations comprised breaches of the fidiciary duty the union owed to members and nonmembers alike.

In the Encyclopedia of U.S. labor and working-class history, Volume 1, we read that the Court found that since the Unions had been given the status of exclusive bargaining agent, they had implicitly assumed a fiduciary duty of fair representation for all employees in the bargaining unit.

From Wikipedia:

The duty of fair representation is incumbent upon U.S. labor unions that are the exclusive bargaining representative of workers in a particular group. It is

the obligation to represent all employees fairly, in good faith, and without discrimination

. Originally recognized by the United States Supreme Court in a series of cases in the mid-1940s involving racial discrimination by railway workers' unions covered by the Railway Labor Act,

the duty of fair representation also applies to ... public sector workers covered by state and local laws regulating labor relations

.

The US Supreme Court now recognizes the necessity for protecting the "workers' precarious position between the two giants of labor and management and have recently moved in the direction of establishing a negligence standard to determine breach of the duty of fair representation".

Unions cannot pick which employees they will represent. They cannot pull out all the stops for a conscientious employee saddled with an unjust situation and not make the same effort for a despicable goldbrick. They get the ugly babies along with the pretty ones. If a Union were to treat an unappealing member's complaint with benign nonchalance, they are liable themselves and subject to decertification. A decision to abandon an unsavory Member is a decision to risk dissolution of the union.

Why do Unions support every member, even if it's onerous or unwise? In the normal world, in places like Iowa or Kansas, our answer would be:

• In general, unions support employees consistently because of the theory of Duty of Fair Representation.

---

Unfortunately, I've learned that there are two sets of answers.

There's a Normal-World (Iowa, Kansas) answer, and then there's a Pittsburgh answer.

Here in Pittsburgh, there are many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many, many examples of Pittsburgh unions standing up for unsavory or malpracticing members.

Given the remarkable supply of local anecdotes, we must recognize one additional Pittsburgh answer to the question, Why do Unions support every member, even if it's onerous or unwise?

• Normal World: In general, unions support employees consistently because of the theory of Duty of Fair Representation.
• Pittsburgh: Joe King and Dan O'Hara really don't have a clue, and their sense of time is about 60 years off.

The theory of Duty of Fair Representation does not provide for discretion. It's not the Union's role to handle incompetent or scandalous employees; that falls to management to handle. It's the Union's role to represent them.

It's not too different from the application of our American constitution or our Bill of Rights. We don't guarantee rights to the inoffensive, tolerable, well-mannered members of the Rotary; we guarantee rights to everybody, specifically including the poorest, the weakest, even the stupid and offensive, even in Pittsburgh, and we even guarantee these rights to Glenn Beck.

10-13 Pittsburgh Police Bike Patrol

A bike unit police officer was struck by a car in Pittsburgh this afternoon around 2:45 p.m. at Penn and North Atlantic avenues in Garfield.

First, he/she is awesome for being a police officer.
Doubly awesome for being a bike riding police officer.
Trebly awesome for being on the street, in traffic, in January - sure, you see them in July and you think, sweet gig, ride a bike around town. Seems like it's not just a fair weather job.

I have Kevlar tires and carry a cellphone to bail me out. They roll with Kevlar vests and guns, and chase the bad guys.

Our thoughts and prayers are with the officer, and I hope they're back on the bike soon.

Friday Evening Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District

Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District
Friday, January 28th 2011

Download a printable Map and schedule.

The Crime of Not Getting it: Pittsburgh FOP / Fraternal Order of Police

1	2	3	4
			^

The great crime is the beating of Jordan Miles, and the subsequent failure of the system that is supposed to protect him to take any action on his behalf, which diminishes public confidence and the rule of law. Our leaders politicians don't get that.

We are amused at Pittsburgh Police Fraternal Order of Police investigating internet crimes. Does the FOP have any jurisdiction? Do they control the Cloud? Could the FOP seize the router from a suburban Wifi hotspot? What will they do with the (previously private) information on that server? Is the city liable for the FOP closing a business for two days? Would they have closed the Duquesne Club's wifi as quickly as they shut down "Pittsburgh's premier source for independent, foreign, gay+lesbian & documentary DVDs"? (per their website)


The Great Hoax serves well to remind us of the event, but the attention paid to the Hoax by the FOP, the City, and the Media actually overwhelms the attention paid to the Beating, and serves as a distraction. Every good magician needs a distraction to fool the audience. We shouldn't let the Hoax distract us from the Beating.

If the Fraternal Order of Police had ignored the Hoax, it would have blown over in one news cycle. But they reacted and over-reacted, sent seven cops into a coffee shop, and the Hoax has fixed public attention on the FOP's priorities for a week. They don't get it.

People who do "get it" see this as a manifestation of the Streisand Effect.

The Streisand Effect is a primarily online phenomenon in which an attempt to hide or remove a piece of information has the unintended consequence of perversely causing the information to be publicized more widely and to a greater extent than would have occurred if no contrary action had been attempted. It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, following a 2003 incident in which her attempts to suppress photographs of her residence inadvertently generated further publicity.

As early as 1993, John Gilmore observed that "the Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." Examples of such attempts include actions against photographs, numbers, files or websites (for example via a cease-and-desist letter). Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity, often being widely mirrored across the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.

By the way, the Hoax Letter is online, if you're interested.

The conflation of the City, the Police, and the FOP in their responses to the Hoax blurs any boundaries of propriety or fiduciary responsibility. The FOP is not a law enforcement agency; they are a labor union. The police department should not take direction from the employee's union. The District Attorney should not wait for the Justice Department to tell him what happened. There is a complete abdication of civilian / political leadership. They don't get it. It isn't 1952 any more, Toto.

---

A few weeks ago, I suggested that if Pittsburgh had any real journalists, they'd conduct an interview with the young coed victimized in the Roethlisberger debacle of last summer.

Now I have a second person on my List of Those Who Should Be Interviewed: If there's a journalist working in Pittsburgh (rather than enabling sports writers, shills for the Allegheny Conference, and apologists for the Marcellus Coalition) can we also please have an interview with Jordan Miles? How is he doing? Is he holding out as well as the three men on paid administrative leave? Have the results when you Google his name affected his college applications? Is he okay?

---

And finally, the Crime that has not happened yet. It would be wonderful for the city, the police, the politicians, and the Pittsburgh F.O.P. if something bad happened to Jordan Miles. I pray that it does not happen.

Related: EBM: Justice Delayed: "Does anyone not get that the charge by minorities that the cops sometimes act like they are part of an occupying army is grounded in fact?"

You could Google Pittsburgh Fraternal Order of Police, or else Google Pittsburgh FOP.

The Crime of Pittsburgh's Jordan Miles

1	2	3	4
^

You read stories about young black men who end up hurt or killed after interacting with police. Let me make an assumption that I can't prove, but seems true on its face: A lot of those young men were doing something they weren't supposed to do, a lot of them were criminals, a lot of them have prior records.

In the aftermath of the injury/death, the newspaper stories often describe the young man as an angel. He shoveled the snow at his Aunt's house. He helped a friend move. He was a good kid that didn't mean any harm. He planned to get his GED next year. He was a choir boy. Let me make another assumption I can't prove: most of the time, that dead young man wasn't really a choir boy. Most of the time.

Sometimes a mistake is made. Everybody make mistakes. There's not too many.

Sometimes it's no mistake. Sometimes Rogue cops, out-of-control bad cops, beat up a kid who is, in fact, an honor student and a choir boy. The cops get to write the reports, they have control of the scene, they produce the record of what happened. What does the kid have?

One year ago this week, Jordan Miles, a senior at the city's Creative and Performing Arts high school, was beaten by three cops. They beat him, tazed him, left him with a tree branch impaling his gums, and then filed charges of aggravated assault and resisting arrest against him.

In reality, his only crime was WWB: Walking While Black.

Let me also say: ninety-nine percent of police officers are excellent people who care. That's why they're cops. God bless them.



continuing - - -

Touring Pittsburgh via Bike Trails

The perfect time for a downtown bike ride is during an out-of-town Steelers game. Enough people are watching the game to reduce traffic and any crowds, and there's plenty of open parking spots at the trailhead. Sunday afternoon the Parkway West was gridlocked so instead of riding the Montour Trail, I rode my bike on the city trail system and tried to map the various routes with my GPS.

I started at the south end of the Eliza Furnace Trail (aka the Jail Trail), riding north. There's a well-marked detour where the trail has been excavated at Bates Street. I took the Jail Trail past the Golden Triangle bike shop to the Smithfield Street bridge. Eventually there's going to be bike access down to the Mon Wharf trail and into Point State Park, but that's a next-year project so I ended up riding in a few blocks of street traffic to Point State Park.

From Point State Park you can ride over the Ft. Duquesne Bridge (excellent bike ramps) and join the North Shore Trail eastbound along the Allegheny River. That leads you to the recently opened replacement trail on concrete piers over the river (photo below), and then to the Millvale Trail.



On the way back, you can take a spur onto the Washington's Landing Trail, which is very nice but maybe a bit overgrown - it's a pretty narrow trail with reduced sight lines.

Back along the Allegheny River to the stadiums and then north along the Ohio River via the Chateau Trail. This was my first ride along the Chateau Trail, running from the Casino to the Penitentiary. It's a very nice trail, there's both green sections and industrial sections, and the Penitentiary with its concertina wire is an impressive sight. The trail ends just short of the McKees Rocks Bridge.

South to the stadiums again, and then my favorite bike-mile in downtown Pittsburgh: across the Ft. Duquesne bridge, a brief touch down in Point State Park, and then across the Ft. Pitt bridge to the west bank of the Monongahela. It's an incredible bit of bike infrastructure, you go from the North Side to Downtown to Station Square in a matter of minutes.

Then it's the Station Square Trail, to the South Side Trail. This is as nice a trail segment as you'll find anywhere. It does seem like the trail isn't clearly marked between REI and the Hot Metal Bridge, resulting in people riding their bikes on the sidewalk in front of American Eagle's corporate buildings, to their corporate chagrin. The sidewalk has signs "sidewalk closed to bicycles" and "use the tunnel park", but it's not obvious what the Tunnel Park is. Instead of telling people don't ride here, I think it would be more effective if they told people "you should ride over there", and mark the bike lane so clearly that any Yinzer Yahoo could identify it.

Tunnel Park is the green median strip shown in the photo below. It's called Tunnel Park because there's a railroad tunnel underneath the grass, but I don't know how a transient bicyclist could possibly know that. It's completely unmarked.



Next year (2011) the railroad is going to dig up Tunnel Park in order to raise the roof of the underground tunnel by 18 inches, permitting the track to carry double-height train cars. By 2015 the Panama Canal is going to be widened to accommodate bigger ships, and the double-height trains are intended to carry the anticipated increase in freight.

Continued south on the South Side Trail to the Baldwin Borough Trail, which terminates just short of the Glenwood Bridge. This week's announcement of an agreement with Sandcastle and the railroad means that on 11/11/11 (so they say) the Steel Valley Trail will extend further south to Duquesne, and then all the way to DC.

Back north to the Hot Metal Bridge, cross the Monongahela, right turn on the Jail Trail to the trailhead, and then around the corner on Swinburne Street to the Panther Hollow Trail. (The image on the right shows the transition.) I've never been on the Panther Hollow trail in daylight before, and I was really impressed at how much green space there is so close to a congested urban area. Reverse course at the top, back to the trailhead.

Total distance is 32 miles, takes about two-and-a-half hours.

It's a world-class trail system, right here in Pittsburgh. The trails show a very different view of Pittsburgh than you'd usually see, and you see all sorts of 'Burghers out there - kids and students and seniors, runners and rollerbladers. It's really remarkable that people like Mayor Murphy and Linda Boxx were able to build these trails given the hodgepodge of municipalities, the Yinzer resistance to change, and the nature of long-term projects.

If you'd like a really great map of the downtown trail system, email Friends of the Riverfront at friends@FriendsOfTheRiverfront.org and they'll snail-mail you a very nice dead-tree map.

Here's a GPS record of the ride made with a Garmin 76CSx.

Pittsburgh Segway Tour

Friday morning I had the pleasure of spending two hours in the care of Segway in Paradise, Pittsburgh's Segway tour operator. (discussed here in the Post-Gazette) It was a morning well spent.

We departed Station Square in a group of five at 0930 after a quick safety briefing and orientation. We'd been told in advance to wear sneakers and the company provided bike helmets. A rather clever radio earpiece let us hear the tour guide's comments and corrections (just a few) as we maneuvered around town.

We crossed the Smithfield Steet bridge and rode across downtown to Sixth Avenue, then headed north to stop for a break in the Cultural District's Agnes R. Katz plaza. During the break, our guide Ben adjusted the Segway's speed settings (since we had some experience now) so we'd have more power on the broad sidewalks of the North Side trail.

Across the bridge to the North Side, west along the river, took a loop around the baseball stadium, rode down to the river again, and took the Fort Duquesne bridge ramp back to the Point. A few more downtown blocks to the Smithfield Street Bridge and we were done.



Our group had one out-of-towner. Pittsburgh showed well along the route and the tour guide's patter was informative and effective. The two-hour tour cost $60, which is not inexpensive, but two hours was enough time to get comfortable with the machine; I think the 45-minute ride ($25) would leave you wanting more.

Riding the Segway was fun and became intuitive pretty quickly. It wasn't an energetic activity; you stand still on the machine, and lean forward and back.

We rode on the sidewalks, and I wouldn't want to ride a Segway in car traffic. You could see that a downtown that primarily used Segways would be a very cool place, but I don't think there will be a lot of joint-use development.

For worksites that involved crossing intermediate distances (airplane hangars, corporate or college campuses) I could see that having a dozen Segways as duty vehicles would be very practical and a lot of fun.

Website: SegwayInParadise.com. Highly recommended.

Selling Parking Garages in Pittsburgh : Me, Too!

One of Pittsburgh's current imbroglios is the impending sale or long-term lease of Pittsburgh's parking garages. Luke'n'at wants to lease the garages to corporations who will run them as long-term moneymakers in return for a short-term cash payment to the city. This would alleviate some of the political pressure on Pittsburgh politicians, but probably not significantly address the underlying financial issues.


Let's think this through with our "look back™" glasses. The original idea behind garages was to have parking so people could easily do business. The original idea behind meters was to keep a churning supply of short-term parking available for people using local businesses, rather than letting employees and neighbors block the prime spots. Cities once operated garages and parking meters as a public good. Are you old enough to remember that?

The garages and meters have become an industry in their own right, and the original concept is lost. Now the garages and meters exist to take a certain amount of money out of the population for the city's budget, and that money turns parking into a power center with its own priorities, profits, bureaucracy, jobs, and followers. When Luke'n'at sells the garages, the city budget gets a one-time windfall and a long-term income stream, and the taxpayers pay a lot more money over time. People pay more money, government takes in more money- how is that not a tax increase?

And, of course, a corporation gets to be the middleman, diddling the public and taking their share of every dollar. The politicians will get to blame the corporations and save face. The great perversion is that parking (which was once a public good marshalled for local economic benefits) will become overpriced, which will cause unintended consequences that are exactly the opposite of the original intent. All those pennies come from somewhere.

I have a garage, and I've got a near-term cash-flow that's constraining my style a bit. I'm thinking of selling or leasing my garage. I mean, if all those smart people in the city think it's a good financial move, why shouldn't I get in on it?


There's going to be a few problems in the transition. I'm going to have to get all my stuff out of the garage. I'm going to have to implement some sort of Smart-Parking-App on my iPad to track my leasing payments and all that money that'll be rolling in. This would be a great time for somebody from CMU to develop a personal EasyPass reader, so that the sub-contractor could easily charge cars as they come and go. I'll need to it be compatible with Windows 98, please. Just saying.

There's probably an opportunity for extra value-added (and I'm always looking for value-added). It's possible that I could provide upscale coffee beverages for parking clients, let them use my WiFi, sell them maps of the color belts, things like that. I could probably write off my snow blower as an expense.

It's a silly example, but not without intent. If it doesn't make sense, if it's not pragmatic for you to lease out your garage, how does it make sense for the city to lease out it's garages? Where does the supposed new money come from?

The cost will be born by the public, and the pain will be felt by the communities and small business. The only money that will move in this transaction is from the developers and wannabees to the politicians. Which brings us full circle to Luke'n'at.

Moral Authority in Pittsburgh and Phoenix

Excellent story in today's Post Gazette by Eleanor Chute about Sister Lynn Rettinger, the 5-foot-3 principal of Shadyside's Sacred Heart Elementary School who challenged a thief that had taken a wallet out of a parked car.

The perpetrator, who recognized moral authority and was smart enough to not mess with Sister Lynn, handed the goods over, said he was sorry, and walked away.

From the Post Gazette:

I said to him, 'You need to give me what you have.' That's what I say to children if I know they have something they shouldn't. I say, 'You need to give me what's in your pocket.'

What's the key to delivering the line so it gets results? First of all, Sister Lynn does her homework. She knows she has good reason to suspect there is something. "You want to be pretty darn sure he has it. You don't want to make a fool of yourself," she said.

Sister Lynn doesn't ask whether students have something. "That forces them into a lie. ... I don't want to do that."

With the statement, she said, "If you say it firmly enough, they think, 'She really does know what I have.' " She added, "Nine out of 10 times, it works."

I think there's a tremendous wisdom in her comment that I've highlighted in yellow. What a tremendous presence and moral authority she must have.

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Which brings me to today's story in the NY Times (which you'll probably see in the Saturday Post-Gazette.) about Sister Margaret McBride, a senior administrator of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix who has recently been excommunicated by her bishop.

A 27-year-old mother of four arrived at the hospital in her third month of pregnancy. According to local news reports and accounts from the hospital and some of its staff members, the mother suffered from a serious complication called pulmonary hypertension which created a high probability that the strain of continuing pregnancy would kill her.

"In this tragic case, the treatment necessary to save the mother’s life required the termination of an 11-week pregnancy,” the hospital said in a statement. “This decision was made after consultation with the patient, her family, her physicians, and in consultation with the Ethics Committee.” Sister McBride is on that committee.

Apparently the Bishop interviewed Sister McBride, she explained the situation and the decision, and the bishop informed her of her new status.

Unbelievable. The Catholic hospital and the ethics committee needed to make a judgement call in a terribly complex situation. They made a judgement based on expert medical advice - saving the mother's life required the abortion.

So the question I'm left wondering is, how come a Pittsburgh thief does a better job of recognizing moral authority than a Phoenix bishop?

Pedal Pittsburgh Sunday May16

This Sunday May 16th, starting at SouthSide Works: Pedal Pittsburgh. It's a ride, not a race. This has always been a fun, well-organized event. Last year saw 2200 riders.

Participants can choose from six courses ranging from 6 to 60 miles.

6:30 a.m. 7:00 - 8:00 8:00 - 9:00 9:00 - 10:00 10:00 - 10:30 11:30 - 3:30

Registration Opens 50 & 60 Mile Riders Depart 25 & 35 Mile Riders Depart 15-Mile Riders Depart 6-Mile Riders Depart Lunch & Entertainment

Click here for registration.

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Excellent Fresh Burgh-Bike Web Stuff:

Ms. Mon's Salon: I Sing A Song of Cyclists
Chris and Heidi: Pittsburgh to DC, He Said She Said Trip Report

DC to Pittsburgh Bike Trip

It's the time of year to consider such things.

Here's a video from 2008's Adventure Cycling tour from DC to Pittsburgh. Out of the several video's online, I think it does the best of presenting trail conditions on both the C&O Canal Trail (DC to Cumberland) and the Great Allegheny Passage (Cumberland to Pittsburgh).


A few notes: most of the video is shot from a recumbent bike, that's why you'll see shoes pumping up and down. These folks are camping; hotels are also an option. At the end of the video you'll see the riders; I'd like to point out that none of them are young triathletes (NTTAWWT).

Pittsburghers Sam and Jane Menchyk are scheduled to begin their 7-day bike ride from Washington DC to near Pittsburgh on May 29th. Their website contains pictures and reports from previous rides (this is their third time) and contains a lot of valuable information. Sam makes really great infographics, weaving geography and schedules into intuitive images. If you're considering such a trip, it's worth a look.

Pittsburgh Cyclist Killed in Kurdistan

Dateline: 1894. (What, did you expect timely reporting? )

Frank Lenz was a Pittsburgh bookkeeper and amateur photographer who became a cyclist during a boom period in which the new "safety bicycle" (with two wheels of the same size) replaced the "standard" penny-farthing, causing a huge rise in the popularity of cycling in America. He enjoyed riding his bicycle so much that he decided to ride around the world.

Three other riders had already circled the globe: Thomas Stevens on a high-wheeler, and Thomas Allen and William Sachtleben on safeties. Lenz made his trip unique by choosing to be the first to ride around the globe using pneumatic tires, which was another groundbreaking technical development of his day.

This is a photo of Frank Lenz and his bicycle, from Adventure Cycling:


His bike was state of the art at the time, and it's interesting to see what he's using. It's a safety bicycle, both wheels the same size; it has a front suspension, a springed saddle, a single fixed-gear, a chain drive, and a skirt guard covering the rear wheel. Those are all items that remain in use today. His backpack contains his camera equipment, his bags carry his effects, and the leggings keep his trousers out of the chain. (Parenthically, I'm pleased to find somebody with more stuff on his bike than I have on mine.)

In 1892 Frank Lenz proposed to Outing Magazine (it meant something else back then) that if they'd sponsor his around-the-world bike ride, he would provide dispatches and photographs for the magazine. He was surprised when Outing accepted his proposal, and in May 1982 Lenz quit his job in Pittsburgh to commence his grand adventure.

"Mr. Lenz will have a long but pleasant trip, and will doubtless have some interesting stories to tell the boys upon his return home,” wrote the Pittsburgh Dispatch on May 15, 1892. (He would have fit in nicely at Pittsburgh's Tweed Ride.)



Here's what Sports Illustrated has to say about his first segment, New York to California: Although only 25 at the time, Frank Lenz had been cycling long distances for nearly a decade. The first 3,000 miles, therefore, were no problem. Heading north to Albany, Lenz swung west to Buffalo, following the line of the Erie Canal "up the valley of the Mohawk, the cradle of the military forces of the Revolution and the grave of the military hopes of the British." From Buffalo to Minneapolis he traveled across Canada, then followed the track of the Northern Pacific Railroad to Spokane Falls and the telegraph route to San Francisco, which he reached on Oct. 20, 1892. Along the way, delegates of every cycling club within 20 miles of his route turned out to wine him and dine him. His trans-continental ride took from June 4th through October 20th.

He enjoyed Japan tremendously, although he wasn't crazy about the food. His trip across China did not go as well, and at times he relied on his revolver to protect himself and his bicycle. He was happy to reach Burma in India.

He explained his touring philosophy in Outing: “I have found it better not to ride more than 50 to 65 miles a day, if stopping places can be procured at those distances. Riding from 70 to 100 miles day after day is fatiguing and would soon wear out the strongest of riders.” His comments still ring true today for Pittsburghers planning a trip on the Great Allegheny Passage. It took Lenz one month to ride the 1,303 miles from Calcutta to Lahore, including ten days of rest.

He took a ferry to Persia, and found Tehran so pleasant that he was not eager to leave. From Adventure Cycling: ... he was anxious to cross Turkey before the heat of summer, so he reluctantly departed on April 1 for the Persian city of Tabreez, 375 miles away. Later that month from Tabreez, Lenz confessed to being profoundly homesick. “I long for the day which will see me again on my native hearthstone and my wanderings at an end,” he wrote to Outing, just shy of the two-year anniversary of his departure from Pittsburgh. He identified his next destination as Erzeroum in eastern Turkey, a distance of almost 300 miles. It was the last that Outing or anyone else would hear from Frank Lenz.

On May 2, 1894 his last piece of correspondence was dispatched from Tabriz, Persia. "I leave today," he wrote, "on my way to Constantinople, now only 900 miles distant." And with those words, Frank Lenz disappeared for all time.

Stung by criticism that it had sent Lenz on a death mission, Outing sent another cyclist (Sachtleben, one of the three previous globe-peddlers) to Kurdistan to determine Lenz's fate. He learned that a notorious Kurdish chief had ordered Lenz robbed and murdered after the cyclist had inadvertently insulted him during a chance encounter in a small village. The bandits ambushed Lenz the following morning as he crossed a river several miles outside of town. According to Sachtleben’s account, one of the Kurds slashed Lenz on the hand with a sword. Bleeding, Lenz begged for his life, even offering to convert to Islam, but he was killed and buried in the riverbank. (plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose)

I had never heard of the story of Frank Lenz, a Pittsburgher who dominated world news for a bit in 1894, until just this week when bloggers mentioned a new book coming out with his story (The Lost Cyclist: The Epic Tale of an American Adventurer and His Mysterious Disappearance); it's available in June and I'm eager to read it.