Pittsburgh Revolution

With the proliferation of video, even on smart cell phones, you’d think that old-fashioned still photography would be dead.  You’d be wrong.

If you want neat views of western Pennsylvania landmarks and people (and a few from across the globe), go to the exhibit of “panoramics” on the website of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.        ( www.post-gazette.com/revolution )  Photographer Steve Mellon and others make a 360 degree circle with their cameras of some nifty local scenes.  By using your mouse you can “do a 360,” or zoom in or out, or anything else.  The most recent post is the on-going Civic Arena interior demolition.  But there are any number of others, including the recent 10^th anniversary somber ceremonies at the Flight 93 memorial in Shanksville, Steeler training camp, and a wondrous interior view of St. Anthony’s Chapel (with over 5,000 authentic saints’s relics, aka “the bone yard”) in Troy Hill. 

I first noticed this photo technique in the Post-Gazette two years ago with Steve Mellon’s view of Page’s Dairy Mart, at the corner of Carson Street and Becks Run Road, just beyond South Side.  (It’s in the Revolution archives, dated 7/13/2009.)  This outdoor ice cream palace underneath a huge and always-leaking-rain-water train viaduct is only about three miles from where I grew up in Baldwin.  As some of you know, my dad was a Little League baseball manager for North Baldwin for many years.  Page’s would give out a free milkshake to any kid in the North Baldwin league who hit a home run, or got four hits in one game, or who pitched a shutout.  No dummies they.  When any kid got the free milkshake, of course it was Dad or Mom who had to drive him to Page’s—along with three or four of his teammates.  The Dairy Mart made out like bandits.  Since my brothers Fred and Len were demon players, they often got the free milkshake card.  My brothers and I made out like bandits—at the expense of my dad’s wallet!  But even now, 60 years after its founding, it’s still a neat place to go for great ice cream treats.  (Closed November through March.)

Also in the archives, check out Isaly’s in West View, Joe’s Shoe Repair on Fourth Street Downtown, or St. Nicholas Croatian Church, Millvale, or lots of others.  Enjoy new, and old, vistas of Pittsburgh.