Carnegie, Heinz, Warhol

Pittsburgh is one of those places that seems surreal...tough steel bridges, an insane amount of art, serious (serious) football culture, boarded up architectural wonders, a funicular rising up the side of a mountain- the whole place just seems like some weird dream and each time I go there I feel transported into a strange Pennsylvania microcosm so unlike our own!

Pittsburgh Filmmakers and the Three Rivers Film Festival brought about the PA premier of Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then, live show and all! The Regent Square Movie Theater is a great old movie house, complete with patented sticky floor (which I have nostalgia for from the red concrete gooey-ness of my childhood theater!), on the outskirts of Pittsburgh proper where a large crowd watched as we performed one of the last few Gravity live shows. Our band for this show was Brendan (on drums), Mike McGinley (as Mike McGinley, not Leonard, on an array of things ranging from trombone to violin), Drew Henkels (on various trash picked items! and a theramin! and harmonium! and a guitar!), me (foley lady) & Brent (narrator, band leader, guitar) and, our newest addition to the line-up, Todd Chandler (on upright bass) and we made an all new, improvised soundtrack settle just below the film in a way that I think really picked up on the strange-ghostly town! This show really sounded different than any of the other ones we've played...I don't know what it is but a really gruff rock noise percussive jazz or something permeated the soundtrack and it felt like a whole new life was in the film!

After the show we ambled around ending up over at Kelly's Bar, a seeming P-burgh legend, where I learned of the local org LUPEC: Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails! There mission of a general good time and a mild feminist social archive is exactly how I live my life as a lady- strong, warming and shared with good friends! (Clinks glass to the ladies of Pittsburgh!) The next morning we foraged for delicious food (Quiet Storm pictured below!) in a deserted stretch of the city before heading on to our next destination...it is so unsettling to be in an old industrial boomtown with tons of shells of houses and the remnants of eras past, it really makes you wonder how we keep repeating this cycle of industrialization! Here's to hoping recent efforts can bring about real change! (Clinks protest cow bell to those occupying Wall Street!)