the burgh of pitts

yes yes ya'll ... sorry for my AWOL status the last week or so, me and the misses road tripped it to that burg of burghs ... PITTSBURGH! whoohoo ... for a city its size (about 300,000 but 2 million including metropolitan areas) it boasted some really happening architecture, public art, record shops and general vibe that i really got into to. the trip got off to a rough start as neither us thought to bring an atlas, map or GPS leaving us with only a really roughly sketched set of directions copied off google maps. i somehow managed to miss the 90 exit in chicago and ended up on 94/80 instead of 90/80. luckily that worked out as we skipped the skyway and were only a few miles more south then we needed to be saving 3 bucks in tolls ... hazah! this wasn't the first time we would get lost on major hightways ... point being, take a goddamn map when you go on a road trip to places you never been before. we spent the first night somewhere outside the city near the airport (pittsburgh's airport is really far out from the city) and drove in monday during the day. ol girl was sweet enough to let me indulge "the habit" and we hit two record stores; jerry's and the attic. god damn. i could have easily spent days in both these places. jerry's boasts of "not even having a cd player in the store" which was was accurate. warehouse sized space just chock full of vinyl. there was some organization, but the more i looked around the more it became apparent that there had been an attempt at categorizing at one time and then over the years its slowly deteriorated. this became apparent as i pulled a velvet underground and redd foxx comedy album out of the same bin. plus jerry (he does work there) gave me about 70 in recs for 50 even. score. i didn't even get to the 45s which were literally stacked about 15 shelves high in boxes of about 150-200 45s each. each shelf had about 20 boxes on 'em. the other joint was called the attic and was located just outside pittsburgh in millvale, PA. i was a little skeptical after checking out the website. looked kinda like a place that would have 10 LPs in a box for 10 bux each and they're all copies of Saturday Night Fever and Paul Anka. this place was smaller (though it seems they lost a majority of their stock in a flood in 2001 ... shame, look at that pileup!) and had CDs, but more importantly had the ill soul stacks. it was one of these places that if he had a certain record in stock, there were 3-6 copies for you to pick from. no prices on anything, so i was a little nervous when i pulled out the original stax release of sam and dave's hold on, i'm comin, and near-mint copies of wilson pickett's "midnight mover" and the temps "with a lot o' soul" i was gettin' ahead of myself money-wise. however, i forgot i wasn't in dusty groove and picked up the whole stack for way cheap. cha$ching. my hands covered in mold, mildew and dust, we grabbed a quick bite and the woman wanted to check out little earth, who makes purses out of recycled products. stuff like license plates, soda cans and pull tops. unfortunately pittsburgh is simply the home of their corporate headquarters and they looked as surprised as us when we walked into their offices. woops. we did manage to get lost in the "hood" on our way there (consisted of about 5 square blocks) and i drove the wrong way down a very major one way street for a block or two before i realized what i was doing. awesome! we drove around the rest of the city and checked out the university of pittsburgh and some other old school schools (there's like 4 in the city) and stayed at the omni william penn (ooh la la) which we got for 95 bux instead of the original 350 (thanks william shatner!). tuesday night we went to the andy warhol museum and the mattress factory. the warhol was pretty cool, less cause of andy's work and more cause of work by this english artist ron mueck. he creates these amazingly realistic sculptures of people in various scales that you just have to see in person to really appreciate (they are incredibly life like). i dunno if any of you readers went to the warhol retrospect that the MCA Chicago had about 6 months ago but the work on display there eclipsed the warhol work the "andy warhol museum" had. i have to wonder if this is because warhol's whole mantra was essentially "create to sell" and his estate no longer owns any significant body of work. for example, they had a whole floor (out of 7) devoted to warhol's paintings/screenprints of animals. it was really really bad. not only because of the kitsch value but because they were simply bad pieces. another floor was devoted to photos by neke carson who infamously painted a portrait of warhol with his ass. rectal realism kid. his photos were pretty whatever. on to the mattress factory! i had no idea what to expect with this and it ended up being pretty cool. its a museum set up for site-specific installations done by artists that sit in residency at the museum while they work. they have a sprawling complex including apartments for the artists currently working, research offices, an outdoor garden, and obviously the museum. there were only 6 pieces currently up, it looked like we just missed a major show and they were in the process of changing over. this proved a little annoying as 3 of the pieces on one floor were these massive mazes that are to be observed in silence and on the other side of the wall is a guy cutting metal with a circular saw. the pieces were installed by artist James Turrell and were truly disorientating. after memorizing a series of directions on the map outside the elevator you start walking and it immediately becomes pitch black. navigating the turns you come across the "end" which in all three pieces was some kind of light either projected or back lit. here's the stuff we saw. keep in mind these rooms are massive which is crucial in making pieces such as these work. we got there just 30 min before closing time and thusly didn't have time to really take in everything. they had a couple smaller houses set up as extensions of the museum that we couldn't get to in time. and that was it. we got back on the road and i convinced ol girl that we should ball that jack straight across ohio and indiana and on to home.

so yeah, pittsburgh. good job on that.

i got pictures i wanna put up cause there's some good ones.