Pittsburgh, famous for its year-long beautiful weather (heh), delivered up one hell of a weekend for Kos this year. Congrats to everyone who came from somewhere where it’s raining or a hundred degrees in the shade right now. Unfortunately, do not expect a ton of political blogging as I am thick in the weeds of buying a house. I do, however, have a couple bits of advice for Kos’ers in Pittsburgh.
* Best place to see a sunset or the city at night: the West End Overlook is one of Pittsburgh’s best-kept scenic secrets. It provides fantastic views of town from the west, it has a great dog run if you’re traveling with pets and it is never mobbed, unlike the promontory on Mount Washington. However, getting there is tricky for first-timers even when there is no construction on the West End Circle (which there is), so make a map. Close second: the top floor of the US Steel building, downtown.
* Great food: The best pizza in town is Mineo’s on Murray avenue in Squirrel Hill. Don’t let anyone, least of all my sister, tell you that Aiello’s (more or less next door) is better because that is wrong and it always has been wrong and I am tired of hearing about it. Caveat: some people, who are wrong, think that a thick layer of greasy cheese detracts from the experience. Second, the corner of Highland Ave. and Center in East Liberty might be the most underrated food spot in Pittsburgh. You can find two (!) very good Ethiopian restaurants as well as Paris 66, a French creperie and restaruant that somehow (I honestly do not know how) manages to sell first-rate surrender monkey cuisine for affodable prices. All of these are BYOB, but the city’s top wine store is right across Highland Ave (open Sundays until 5).
* Great beer: Also in East Liberty, the Sharp Edge tavern has something like 300 beers on hand and a tap longer than some seaworthy vessels. The food is good enough to pair with Piraat, Witterke or a Baltika Porter. My personal happy place is the bacon bleu burger with Southern Tier’s UnEarthly, a Delirium Nocturnum or a Rochefort #12 if I’m feeling wealthy.
Now for a pic from my E-P1. Macro again.
Kit zoom plus a FL-36 flash with a clip-on diffuser. The pic is a crop with resolution dropped by 25% to fit on the blog. F5.6 1/180 @ 42mm.
Irrelevant,YetPoignant
Doop de doo, scrollin’ through Balloon-Juice, la de da, hooray for pet pics! Lily’s looking good, all hail Tunch, ooo a baby pic, that’s different, and . . . uh . . . um . . . what the hell is that?!
Why does the best photograph on B-J have to be so . . . unsettling? Can’t you go photograph some kittens or something?!
wvng
Tim, is that a macro add-on lens, or a built-in macro function in the camera? I have an old Nikon Coolpix that did great on macro settings (for example: http://www.cacaponinstitute.org/Closer%20Look/Closer%20Look%203.htm) but that camera just died (something about falling from teh roof of my car) and the newer digital cameras just don’t do the job.
wvng
Irrelevant, he could photograph the mites on the end of a kitten’s whisker. Would that do?
x
Re: Pizza. The crust should be paper thin and the cheese should float on a lake of luscious sauce with enough oil to prevent the sauce from evaporating.
Choking on globs of cheese is not good pizza.
JenJen
Just watched a bit of the RightOnline Conference also taking place in Pittsburgh… Malkin just spoke. It was a very small crowd, and a very boring speech, but no surprises on either count.
In other news, does anyone have any background as to why Bob Somerby dislikes Lawrence O’Donnell so much? Oy:
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh081309.shtml
MikeJ
@JenJen: Because Somerby is a psychotic loon?
Crashman06
Nice pic, Tim.
Last Friday, I bottled my first batch of home brew. I almost gave in and cracked open a bottle yesterday, but it’s supposed to sit for one more week.
Waiting is so difficult!
Tim F.
@wvng: The kit lens is not technically a macro. For this image I cropped only 3.5% of the original image area, so you cannot get quite as close with this lens as you could with a true macro lens like your old camera. However, adapters exist to match the E-P1 with almost any lens in existence, including famously good MF macros by Canon, Nikon and Olympus that can be had for a steal.
srv
I’m sure John is thrilled, you can have any news you want with basic Comcast, as long as it is Fox:
http://beachwriter429.dailykos.com/
Betsy
Ok, but seriously, what in the name of god is that? Some sort of mutant moth-spider hybrid monster?
jharp
Haven’t heard anyone mention how tricky it is to get around in Pittsburgh. One wrong turn and it takes 45 minutes through tunnels and across bridges to get back on track.
Also how about a devonshire sandwich? I used to get them all the time.
And the Fort Pitt Museum. Go see it.
Pittsburgh is a great city.
Bill H
Not to nitpick on resolution, but if I’m not mistaken, the best a browser can display is 72dpi. I have no idea what I’m talking about, but I read that somewhere. Feel free to clarify.
wasabi gasp
I’m looking to pick up a point ‘n shoot for my girlfriend’s birthday and something I noticed is many of them take AA batteries. My intention was to get one with a rechargeable battery that can be charged similar to a cell phone, but considering that so many don’t come that way, I’m getting the impression that the optimal solution is to go the route of rechargeable AA battery kit. I suspect the benefit of this is due to relative high cost of proprietary batteries combined with short charge life of power hungry digital cameras. Amirite?
I’ve been eying Panasonic Lumix models in the $150 range.
Seebach
So, since I’m late to the Somersby party, I take it he’s like some kind of left-wing David Broder? In his mind, being partisan is a worse sin than say, war crimes?
wvng
Tim, thanks for the response. The big thing is being able to focus at a fixed length, or being able to train the camera to look in the right place to obtain it’s focal distance. With their high pixel resolution, the new low end digital cameras can capture plenty of detail, but convincing them to get the right focus is very hit or miss. My old Coolpix in its macro mode was much better at that than my new one.
BTW, still waiting for a picture of the mites on the end of a kitten’s whisker,
JenJen
@MikeJ: Yeah, thanks for that. I stopped reading him sometime around 2004, but Steve Benen linked to his post.
I recall during the 2008 Election, Somerby almost concern-trolled himself to death.
Radon Chong
@Tim F. – ,a href=”http://failblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/fail-owned-cigarette-smoking-fail.jpg?w=500&h=210″>Congrats on quitting smoking, btw.
Radon Chong
@Tim F. – Congrats on quitting smoking, btw.
The Other Steve
@wasabi gasp: You is right. We have a Kodak and it uses two AA… Basically you buy rechargeable AA batteries and then charge them. This costs you an extra $30-50 or so.
We have a Kodak Z810is camera that I just love. Best Camera I’ve ever owned. First digital I’ve had which was fast, and had decent color. I was reading tychay’s blog, and apparently most of the digital cameras I had in the past didn’t filter out infrared or something and so they’d tend to distort the picture colors with crap a normal person can’t see. If I understand that correctly.
MBSS
beautiful photographs. the fly the other day was great. it made flies look beautiful.
OT
last night my buddy was telling me about a dream he had. he was trying to get to his friends in the dream, but there was a large spider web he couldn’t cross, and it was covered with menacing spiders. he tried and tried, but couldn’t get across. then he woke up, and was walking out to his car, and saw the largest spider he had ever seen right in front of him. it quickly scurried away.
his story was still fresh in my mind when i came across your picture, which was the first thing i saw after awaking this morn.
geg6
Tim F, you always have a prejudice for the east neighborhoods! With the exception of the West End Overlook, that is, which is truly a hidden gem from which I watched 3 Rivers imploding. But those who want to see west neighborhoods can go to Crafton to the Sharp Edge Creek House on old Route 60 for the same experience as the Tavern. I like the North Side after a morning at the Strip. There’s a little place, I think it’s called Sylvia’s, in the Strip that has awesome Lebanese food. The stuffed grape leaves, lamb on the rod, and kibbe are scrumptious. And then I head over to the Warhol, which is always interesting if you appreciate modern art. Bloomfield has fantastic Italian about every three doors and is one of the great ethnic neighborhoods ever. And as a Pitt grad, I must say that no one should ever miss the yummy cheese fries that come in giant mounds for a small order at the fabulously funky Dirty O. I lived on those and draft beer my senior year.
flavortext
@Seebach:
Somerby is a media critic and is at his best when he points out journalistic laziness. But he likes to talk about “liberals” as a monolithic group and blames them whenever the right-wing noise machine starts yapping too loud. Once you’ve read a few of his posts, you’ve pretty much read them all.
As for that post: it isn’t racism because old white people went crazy under Clinton too? Who cares what color the President is if he’s going to send my hard-earned tax dollars to lazy darkies and illegals who mooch off society?
flavortext +2
JenJen
@flavortext: @Seebach: What flavortext said re: Somerby, Double-Plus-Plus-Plus. And a third.
Comrade Kevin
That picture looks like it came straight from Alien.
Roger Moore
@wasabi gasp:
I greatly prefer the custom rechargeable batteries to AAs. AAs are more readily available and a bit cheaper, but they’re heavier, bulkier, and have a much lower energy density so they can’t take as many pictures on a charge. The biggest advantage of AAs is that they have a lower up-front price because the camera maker can include a couple of cheap-ass AAs in the package instead of a rechargeable battery and a charger. Most of that price advantage disappears unless you’ve already invested in rechargeable AAs.
WyldPirate
ominira
That’s an incredibly beautiful yet disturbing photo. I’d extricate the moth from the web if I could.
I’m still feeling the after-effects of drinking and dancing too much at a Toto La Momposina concert last night. I remember when my friends and I would go clubbing till 6 a.m. in NYC on a Friday night/Saturday morning, get breakfast and go out again Saturday night. Now even thinking about that makes me want to go back to sleep. I am officially old.
cleek
i love those spiders. they’re orb weavers of some kind, but i like to call them Flying V’s.
nice pic, too. impressive little camera!
Bill H
I have an Olympus digital camera; nothing fancy, but great for the “family snapshot” kind of thing I do. I bought rechargeable AA’s for it and they lasted about three pictures and died. The camera store gave me replacements and the same thing happened. This time the guy at the store said not to use rechargeables, to use regular alkaline batteries, and that they would last almost forever. Turns out to be the case. They last for hundreds of pictures including flash. He said that is the case for several models of Olympus and nobody knows why.
Sentient Puddle
@Crashman06:
I hear ya on that, but yes, do wait. In fact, I might actually suggest waiting a third week. Last week, I cracked open a bottle of my first homebrew at two weeks in the bottle, and it was disgusting. I mentioned the story to a friend at work, who suggested I bring him a bottle “to be sure” (yeah, he was just going for the free beer). He waited until Thursday to drink it, and said it actually wasn’t bad, noting that an extra week really could have made a difference.
That said, it was a stout, and those apparently take a bit longer in the bottle to get to a good flavor. But the takeaway here is, do wait! And uh, if it doesn’t taste good at first, give it a little more time. That might help too.
jurassicpork
“(T)he mobs and their mentality, for want of a better word, that have almost completely dominated the national debate over health care tend to resemble in their collective mindless mania that obstreperous Rottweiler, one who’s barely worth the trouble he causes but still loved by the family, acting out when he recognizes the all-too familiar route and realizes that Daddy’s driving him to the vet.”
Scott
I know it is cliche but I have to get a Primanti Bros sandwich every time I go downtown
Lesley
TimF, can you tell me how much the camera cost and whether you bought or needed a zoom lens addition for this? I’m keener on this camera by the minute but wondering how affordable it is compared to other SLRs.
paul reifer
not real political but a native of Murray avenue and surrounding Squirrel Hill (my friends call it rodent ridge)———–I tell every one I have met that while pizza is very personal, Mineo’s is the BEST –EVER!! Thank you (Allderdice class of 65)
wasabi gasp
The Other Steve, Roger Moore, and Bill H:
Thanks for the advice, it really helped me come to a conclusion. I’m going to seek out a model with a proprietary battery that can be recharged like a cell phone.
The extra kicker in choosing that type of camera is I won’t have to worry about becoming my sweetie pie’s battery charger guy at her service and hoppin’ to it with the fresh cells.
monkeyboy
I’ve often found Mineo’s pizza too salty to eat. Then again I’ve noticed it is common in Pittsburgh for restaurants to go heavy on the salt because it makes you drink more beer or maybe just because it is a Burgh thing.
Barbara
I can’t resist. When we used to go for pizza, we went to Della Seles (“Delsels”) (in Verona) or “Mary Joe’s.” Mary Joe made homemade pizza in her basement in Turtle Creek and the first time you went there, you had to give her the name of another current customer so she could trust that you weren’t from the health department. I am pretty sure she is no longer in operation, probably living in a nursing home somewhere, though you never know. Pittsburgh is a pretty scrappy place.
Another fantastic place for views are some of the cemeteries throughout the city. The one in Squirrel Hill is high on the hill overlooking one of the rivers (so sad that I can’t remember which).
If you get a chance, mosey on down to the Bloomfield Bridge Tavern and let me know if it’s still there.
Tim F.
@Barbara: Bloomfield Bridge Tavern is certainly still there, greasy pierogies and all. Best Polish food that you can get as long as you don’t know any Polish people who will cook for you.
Tim F.
@Lesley: The camera cost $800, plus change for a memory card, third-party spare batteries and a skylight filter for the lens. The flash cost $200 and the diffuser was $30 or so. In my opinion there is no such thing as a worthwhile built-in flash, so Olympus saved me money by leaving one out.
Lesley
Thanks for the info.
sus
Tim F.,
I know of 2 houses coming up for sale that are not too far from Mineo’s. :)
I’m not a realtor. I just know of 2 houses. One will probably go on the market in a 2 or 3 of months (guessing). The other, probably, not sure when.
zoe kentucky from pittsburgh
Sharp Edge? Good place and all but the best place for beer in Pittsburgh? Peshaw. Dee’s 6-Pack and Dogs in Regent Square has way more than 300 beers, they claim to have 1000…and it’s stumbling distance from my house. Just yesterday I took a nice afternoon hike in Frick Park with some friends, afterwards headed up to Dee’s to cool off in their walk-in beer cooler. (grin)
I do have to agree with you about Mineo’s and the West End bridge though.
Dayv
It’s like a creepy valentine!
Shinobi
Omg, now I’m going to dream of Mineos for days and days.
Thomas Levenson
F*ck. I’ve been telling myself to wait, wait, wait for the semi-pro rumored EP-2…or perhaps the Panny counter. But these pictures are making that very difficult.
LOL on the ‘za recommendation. Me for the extra layer of grease and cheese. My wife would eat next door.
Thomas Levenson
Also —
My empathy/commiseration on the house purchase. My family just moved into our new place on Thursday. The renovation, including the floors, may be complete by 9/15, but I’m betting 10/1.
I will never move again. I swear. You have my permission to use the Mutual of Omaha Wild Kingdom tranquilizer dart gun on my sorry butt if I ever raise the prospect. A commenter on my place when I announced a hiatus from blogging to deal w. the madness wrote that 4 moves = one divorce for stress. I don’t ever want to get divorced under that calculation (or many others….)
4jkb4ia
I was excited to see that kosher sushi had made it to Pittsburgh at least at one time.
4jkb4ia
(To be fair we had this in St. Louis but it was not the main activity of either restaurant)
4jkb4ia
@JenJen:
Well, the way Lawrence O’Donnell phrased it was condescending. An objective question would be “Why did this issue make you want to get into politics?”
4jkb4ia
If neo-neocon is any kind of example, living 50 years being indifferent to politics as such doesn’t really change even with the shock of 9/11. 9/11 gave her a great moral cause.
MBSS
test post.