And they’re off: Slots take on horse racing

By: Bridget DiCosmo

Ed Childs of Squirrel Hill has a ticket stub from every horse track on the East Coast.
The racing fan says he saw his first horse race at a Maryland town fair at the age of fifteen – and made a $2 bet at the behest of a friend’s mother.
“The worst thing in the [...]

Groceria Merante: Flavor of Oakland

By: Emily Geyman

At 85, Paulino Dinardo isn’t a man of many words. But at Groceria Merante he doesn’t have to be.
The owner knows exactly what Dinardo wants when he walks through the door, and she begins slicing a pound of Swiss cheese.
“I come here almost every week,” says Dinardo as he gingerly takes the neatly [...]

Go Downtown, young man, go Downtown

By J. James

John Cotis, 45, is something of a city-living pioneer.
He’s had a Downtown loft apartment seven years – or almost as long as developers have been looking to repopulate the area. With a new bulge in the demand for inner-city lofts and luxury condominiums, those same developers are hoping to find Cotis some new [...]

Gunman seen in Downtown building

By: The Tribune-Review

Police have shut down bridges and tunnels leading into Downtown and surrounded the former Horne’s department store building between Penn Avenue and Stanwix Street, where a man wielding a rifle is on the roof. The bomb squad and SWAT team also have been dispatched to the scene.
Steve Johnson, 34, of Oak Hill, who [...]

Cuban’s Xplosive advice: Get out the word

By: Tim Piotrowski

Mark Cuban, a Mt. Lebanon native who owns the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, sees one key factor working against the Pittsburgh Xplosion, the minor league basketball team playing at Mellon Arena:
No one knows about the team, despite its decent record.
“Most minor league teams don’t have big enough sales forces, and what they have isn’t [...]

Creative Dinners

By: Sarah Chillson

In two hours, Jennifer McKeigue prepares enough dinners from scratch to feed her husband and three young children for a month.
Julie Hayden catches up on gossip while carefully layering fresh ingredients for vegetable lasagna.
And Neva Ravotti puts the finishing touches on cabbage rolls for her family before preparing chicken Marsala.
This is not a [...]

Born again: Pittsburgh churches live again

By: Emily Geyman

She shuffles past the aisle where her parents were laid out for their funerals and around the pews where she once said her prayers, but Angie Studeny does not bow her head in reverence.
Instead, she carefully balances three overflowing beers on a tray, attempting to dodge waiting customers.
Studeny, 73, has been serving at [...]

Carnegie Mellon ‘bugs’ out

By: Jesse James Helfrich

Stephanie Yuen wakes up at 5 a.m. every weekend morning so she can get into a fiberglass pod with wheels and be pushed down a hill.
The sport is called Sweepstakes, an 85-year-old Carnegie Mellon University tradition, and Yuen, 22, is one of the game’s senior buggy drivers. “Buggy” is the common name [...]

Baby Boomers seek out the exotic

By: Kim Kweder

After traveling more than 9,000 miles to the ends of the earth in Antarctica, Judy Esposito never expected to see anyone from near her home in Swissvale.
But she did. Traveling on a cruise ship with her husband, she ended up sharing a lunch table with a former classmate from ChathamCollege – where she [...]