Hello everybody and welcome t another episode of our podcast.

We are back at Potomac Station Coffee House in Dormont and we have a great show coming your way.

But first I'm Valerie, that's David, and this is our Gen X Pittsburgh podcast.

Tonights guest is Bill O'Driscoll.

He is the arts and culture reporter for WESA 90.5 FM, and he used to work at Pittsburgh City Paper.

That's right.

Which was our go to Gen X. Like what are we doing this weekend?

Tell me about this.

I can' wait to talk to him about that.

Yeah.

And I he's had a long history in we call it nontraditional, but we'll say public, right?

I mean, like with the city paper and then with public radio.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool, right?

And, you know, I just want to mention probably going to be talking a lot about theater, right, with Bill.

And we are actually going to be at a live theate event on September 29th at the.

And you'll excuse me if I get this wrong because I don't know, I'm taking a shot here.

You think we know how to say it by now?

At the Poduty Theater in Tarentum, September 29th, they're actually selling tickets.

Somebody' going to pay money to see this.

Can you believe it?

September 29th.

It's ten bucks.

Half of that money goes to me, Valerie.

So if you want to see us be able to support our Yuengling habit.

Right, right.

And we are going to be talking to Eric Selinger, who gives talks on Saturday morning cartoons.

Favorite Gen X cereal and Music Television, MTV.

You know, I used to work at MTV.

Did you really?

I did good for you, I did, it was exciting.

It was.

Well you know, back in the early 90s, living in New York City, working for MTV and VH1, you know, it was like, you know, it was pretty cool.

Would they pay it?

Was it crap?

It was okay.

I mean, you know, it was the early 90s.

Of course, it wasn't like, you know, but it was great.

I had a great time and some great people hung out with some bands and like, you know, you have no one's listening from Paramount.

You can say, was the pay crap?

No, it paid fine and paid fine.

Well, good for you.

I think I've mentioned before, my first job in radio paid 5.25 an hour.

Yeah, yeah.

So good.

I got a day rate, I got a day rate.

It was a little bi more than that.

That's exciting.

Good for you.

We are back in here at the Gen X Pittsburgh Podcast with Bill O'Driscoll.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Sure.

Thanks for having me.

Of course.

Of course.

We always start off by asking our guests, where did you grow up?

How was your young years back in the 70s?

80s and 90s.

Tell us about yourself from back in the day.

So I'm one of the oldest Gen Xers that there is.

When the oldest 1% of Gen Xers.

I was born in early 65, and I grew up in Philadelphia and its suburbs up until I went to college.

And it was, you know, I mostl I remember the suburban years, which was from ag nine on or so in Bucks County.

Okay.

Anybody knows that area.

And it was it was, you know, it was great.

It was very suburban, you know it was very kind of white bread.

But I made some great friends there that I still have until today and went to college, then at Northwestern Universit up by Chicago in the 80s.

And.

Yeah.

Well what brought you to Pittsburgh?

My then girlfriend, now wife.

It met her before I had moved to Pittsburgh.

My old an old friend of mine who I knew since like fourth grade, who lived up the street from me, went to Carnegie Mellon.

Sure.

And he was doing something incomprehensible with mathematics there.

And, and but I came out to visit him.

And long story short, that' how I met my wife, future wife.

And after a couple more years, I finally moved out to Pittsburgh in 91.

Okay, well.

I'm sorry.

That's okay.

So you really, like, came her when the scene was just starting to, like, like, become really big?

The scene in Pittsburgh started to get really big.

Yeah, I think so.

I mean, the Beehive was pretty new at that time and all that stuff, you know?

And again, like I said, like I'm not like in the sweet spot of Gen-X, in a way.

I was several years older than a lot of the things that are identified as that.

But but yeah, it was definitely happening.

And the Beehive was a great spot, especially because I live on the South side for many years while it was still up and running.

I worked at the Beehive when it first opened.

Wow.

Yeah, okay.

I probably waited on you.

You probably did.

Yeah.

Well.

But so first of all, I'm going to take issue with, you know, that nobody remembers that.

I think that was a great time.

You you had The Replacements.

You had Family Ties.

Right.

Like the early part of Gen X, right.

That was.

Oh yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Definitely.

There was there was a lot of grea things happening then for sure.

And there was.

But I feel like, you know, as somebody who observes arts and culture, I feel like art and arts, a cultural generation is like five years, maybe.

Yes.

Right.

It changes very fast.

Sure does.

And people who were born in 1970 have a considerabl different experience than I did being born in 65.

I agree with you 100%.

So what I'm really interested in is in the beginning you went to northwestern, which you know, is known for its journalism program.

Were you interested in writing or were you going with an idea that already that you were going to be talking about arts and culture, and how did the two meet?

No, I didn't go into it with that idea at all.

I some at some point late in high school, I got it into my hea that I wanted to do journalism.

And Northwestern has a good journalism school, so I applied there.

I got in there, I started working for the student paper, but I did like kind of hard news stuff, basically, you know, the police news, town council news at Evanston, Illinois and stuff like that.

And that's what I did.

You know, I did some after college, I did some record reviews for this magazine called called Reflex.

Oh, yeah, I do remember that I did a handful of around 1990 or so, but it was just kind of a side thing.

Yeah even when I came to Pittsburgh, I was I was doing freelance for the old in Pittsburgh newsweekly.

When I started.

City Paper hadn't actually been founded yet when I first moved to Pittsburgh, and I freelanced for in Pittsburgh.

But I did stuff like, you know, like urban development stories and when, when, when the, the the old new airport opened in 1991, the one that they that's now mothballed.

When that opened, I was there, you know and you know, you know, criminal justice things and environmenta reporting and stuff like that.

I didn't have any idea of doing of doing art stuff really so much although I know it was always in the arts, especially you know, literature and music.

It was later on.

There was a gu who was the editor of City Paper in 97, a guy named John Hayes, okay, who later went on to write for the Post-Gazette.

He they had a they had an opening at City Paper for they ha a staff movie reviewer position, which was very unusual then and is like unheard of now for whatever alternative weeklies remain.

And he asked me if I wanted to do that.

And I'm like, I've never reviewed movies before.

And he's like, that's okay.

I just like the way you write.

So.

So I started that's what I started doing, okay?

And that's kind of how I backed into it.

I did that for about six years, and then there was an openin for arts editor at City Paper, and I took that job in late 2003.

Yeah.

And so while your time as the editor you covered, obviously City Paper was sort of like the touchstone for a lot of peopl where they got their arts news.

Do you remember any big, big stories that were kind of foundational for what you do?

I was trying to think back in early years there.

I started started in 2003, some of the things that were happening right around then, the New Hazlett Theater, which folks now know had sort of been mothballed for a while.

At one point.

It had been a long time home of Pittsburgh Public Theater, but then the public moved downtown to its brand ne O'Reilly Theater on Penn Avenue.

And that New Hazlett, which is this great community asset, was left vacant, although it was in really bad repair.

Kind of a remarkable story.

A lot of local cultural groups the Children's Museum and the Warhol and stuff got together and kind of form this consortium to bring it back to life.

And there still exist today as its own nonprofit in this old, you know Carnegie Music Hall, basically City of Asylum started around that time, was a brand new concept that it would be this organization, this nonprofit that would shelter writers persecuted in their home countrie and give them a place to stay.

That organization is still with us today and doing great stuff.

Another big thing that happened around that time was Pittsburgh Filmmakers merged with Pittsburgh Center for the Arts.

That happened in kind of the late 2000, and that ended up not going so well ultimately.

But it was a big deal.

At the time, the center for the Arts had, which was like, you know, 60 years old at that point, had gone dark, had closed, and filmmakers, you know, took it over.

They merged, and they tried to run them both as one organization for a while.

And so that was very big news at the time as well.

What was the culture like working in a newsroom back in the 90s?

Because I'm sure it's changed.

It changed, you know, before kind of the downfall of journalism a little bit.

Right.

Like what was it like working in the newsroom?

Well, remember, it was an alternative news.

Yeah.

Yeah, right.

It was so it was and we were.

And we were a weekly paper too.

So it was quite different than working at, like a daily newspaper, lik the Post-Gazette or something.

Right.

It was a lo more like working in a magazine, especially in the pre-internet days.

You were all, we had a website.

But I'll tell you this, this stor we had in order to get online, there was one roo you could go to in the office, you had to go down the hall to the special room where there was a modem.

Everybody remember the modems if youre old enough and and you had to wait five minutes or whatever.

You know, you had to get permission from God to, you know, to hook up to the internet.

And so it was very much focused on the print product.

That was what we put out every Wednesday, the print product.

And it was just like this, this weekly thing.

And we weren't really concerned about doing daily news in any way.

If something really big happened, we would respond to it.

But we couldn't really until the next issue rolled around.

So it wa it was very loose.

It was fun.

You know, everybody at that tim was kind of around the same age.

Everybody was in their 20s, in their 30s.

So even like the most veteran people, there were not all that much older than the interns even that we had.

So it was just a lot of fun, you know, and it stayed that way.

The business model was still viable one based on advertising to keep it a free paper.

And before Craigslist which was really a big downfall for the whole that whole industry.

But in those up until you know, the late 2000, it was it was really a fun place to work.

Yeah, it' funny, isn't it?

I remember when Twitter was just becoming a thing and when I was working at KQV, which was an all news station in the city, we I had said we were havin an editorial meeting and I said, you know, it'd be grea if we gave the reporters a phone and then they could tweet, you know, parking rates going up, see more or hear more, you know, at the top of the hour.

And I remember the news director look at me and go saying, are you crazy?

We're not going to let our reporters just type things online that anybody can read.

Like somebody gets to see that first.

And I said, we give them microphones though, right?

Like, I mean, nobody nobody stops them from what they're saying, you know, on the air.

And they were like, yeah, this is different.

And it's so interesting to see now where the business is gone and how it's transformed.

You know, it's it's amazing.

Yeah, it's very different.

And that change, you know, like like the first thing was, was blog which are less of a thing now.

But this was before there was social media as we think of it now, Instagram, Facebook, all those things.

And we started doing blogs eventually to respond to, you know, daily news things, things that were more urgent and pressing or even just to get like some other stuff out there some other stuff that we couldn't fit in the, in the paper, especially as the paper began to shrink, you know, we had fewer and fewer advertisers because of, you know, all that stuff migrated online.

Yeah.

And how many pages was it when.

I mean, as a tech probably a technical question, but no, it was it was really big.

I mean, it's easy to forget now, but it was in like, you know, the the peak years, which was maybe 2005, six, seven, it was routinely 80 to 100 people.

That's amazing.

Every.

Yeah, yeah.

That's amazing.

And City Paper still exists.

It died and it came back.

Right.

But it's I think it's like, oh, it's 28 pages.

Yeah, something like that.

It's less than that.

Yeah.

It's amazingly small now.

Yeah.

I mean, it's amazing that it still exists because many cities don't hav weekly papers like that anymore.

But yeah, it was, it was multiples the size of what is now.

I'm just having worked in medi for so long, I'm flabbergasted that it would get up to 80 pages.

That's unbelievable.

Yeah.

And some of the big issues, like the special, the annual readers poll best o issue would be like 120 pages.

It was it was big.

It was hefty.

Yeah.

Yeah, it was formatted a little different too right, like maybe that was in Pittsburgh.

That looked a little different.

You might be thinking of in Pittsburgh.

At one point they changed their format and they made it smaller and they started stapling it.

That's right.

Which was actually kind of like this quantum, you know, because it was alway loose pages just in the paper.

So if you dropped it, it went all over the sidewalk and then it would blow dow the street and stuff like that.

But yeah, but it was mostly, you know, and city people eventually shrank too cheaper to print the smaller paper and stuff like that.

But it was on newsprint, you know, so it had tha particular feel to it.

Sure did.

Sometimes you would have inserts like dining guides and stuff like that.

But yeah, it was, it was, you know, it had its ups and downs, but it was generally a fun place to work.

And so how did you make the move from the City Paper to WESA?

So I was, you know, again, like this is 2018, 2017 actually, you know, City Paper had been had been shrinking, right.

The business model was, was, was kind of not what it used to be.

And so I was keepin my eyes open for opportunities.

And somebody told me about this job at WESA that was for arts and culture reporter.

That looked very similar to what I did.

It would be coverin the same terrain in Pittsburgh.

This was late 2017.

And and I said he was somebod who worked over there in radio.

And I'm like, I never did radio.

He's like, you can learn it.

Yeah.

Like, all right I'll give it a shot, you know?

So I applied for it and I got the job and I had to learn, you know, recording technology and editing especially is the big thing, you know, using these software programs where you can edit sound.

But it was, you know, my, my wife knew that she she helped some of that with some of that technological stuff.

And I just practiced it a lot.

At some point after you learn the basics, it's just like, you know, like muscle memory, right?

And then the writing is a little bit different to your writing for the, as you well know, the ear rather than the eye, the writing is different, bu it was largely the same thing.

You're still doing journalism.

And so yeah, it's worked out pretty well.

Yeah, yeah.

Give us one of your most memorable stories that you, that you wrote from, from like any time, anytime.

That's the most memorable, the most.

If you could reprint it again, what would it be?

Oh, for for most memorable.

I did a profile once of a you guys might remember him.

He was a street singer in Pittsburgh named Bill Dorsey.

Blind gentleman.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he would be in Oakland.

Then he would be downtown by Kaufmann's, like, catty-corner from.

Yeah.

And I followed him around like a whole summer, basically, just like.

And this is when we ha the space to run long stories.

And that was another thing you could do in the paper at that time.

My, my old editor, Chris Potter, there still jokes with me about it about how long this story was.

But I had the space to do it, you know, and he proved this fascinating kind of, you know, some tragic character in a lot of ways.

But just like, you know, this undiminished sort of, you know, zest for life and for for music and for singing.

And so that was that would be probably one that would jump to mind immediately.

He had been blind basically since birth.

And he had like all these storie and he had all these, you know, a little world around him, like people who were his friends and associates and stuff like that.

He had a he had a run in with the police while I was doing working on the story, you know, so all these things, you know, that you know, that again, nobody would know unless you looked into it.

Right.

And I was, you know, glad that I had the time and the resources t look into it then.

Sure he was.

He was a fixture there for many years.

I haven't seen him on the street lately, I haven't seen yeah, he's he's up there now.

He was in his 60s I think even at the time.

Yeah.

He seemed old to me when I was in college.

Yeah.

He had had a rough life, so he might have looked a bit older than he actually was, but I'm sure he's at least in his 70s now.

When when you were in high school and college, were you into theater and were you an artist or what made you kind of jump into that?

Those areas?

I was always a big reader.

That was probably my main thing.

Just a good imagination, I guess.

And like I said, you know, I didn't really in a strange way, I kind of like backed into it all.

It all came from this offer to like, be a staff movie reviewer, which I had never intended to do whatsoever.

And it all kind of fell from that, more or less.

But I did like it, and I liked I liked learning about the different things.

Like, I'll give you an example, I mentioned Pittsburgh Filmmakers when I started reviewing films for City Paper.

This was in 1997.

I like I better start knowing when I'm talking about.

So I actually took a film history class at the old Pittsburgh Filmmakers.

I took filmmaking classes, took several of them actually.

And it really to make to do the art form really sensitize you when you're watching it.

It's like, oh, now I know I'm not just lik absorbing this thing passively.

I'm thinking about the choices that they made for sound for camera angles, for whatever, you know, even like lightin in color and things like that.

And then I just started trying to educate myself on it.

And that's sort of what you're doing as a journalist anyway, like you would especially working on longer stories, you're kind of jumping into something that you maybe know a little bit about your nothing at all about, but that sounds interesting.

And then you get an opportunity to spend days or weeks learning about this thing and figuring out how best to communicate it to everybody else.

Was that been a challenge?

Because arts is a small word but it encompasses a lot, right?

Like, I mean, you have to b you're responsible for theater, for live performances for local bands, for, you know, 100 other things that come under the term arts in Pittsburgh.

It was it tough trying to learn, you know, because you have an opinion, right?

Oh, I thought this play was great, but maybe it wasn't, you know.

Right.

Well, a lot of it, I mean, especially now, but even largely when I was at City Paper, I didn't usually have the role of a critic per se.

Right.

Yeah.

So it was more about illuminating what was going on with either the makers of art or like, the business of art.

Right.

Like I talked about the Filmmakers Center for the Arts merger, an that was like a business story.

Basically, it wasn't about the making of art so much.

And I've done more storie like even WESA is even more so like that.

I don't really do critical reviews per se.

Right?

You know, I just do like here's a show that's happening, here's like, here' how they're putting it together.

There's a behind the scenes thing.

Or instead of reviewing a book, I'll do an interview with the author.

I do a lot of interviews with local authors, and so my opinion doesn't enter into it so much.

I mean, of course, everybody nobody's objective 100%.

The things you choose kind of betrays your opinio to some degree, but other things kind of choose you, right?

There's no way we could not cover the merger of the Pittsburgh Public Theater and the CLO, which is kind of the one of the big art stories of this year.

Here's an interesting thing, though.

I mean, something I hear a lot in the local arts community is that they they really miss critical reviews, right?

Because and there are still people who do them.

Of course, there's online arts outlets and stuff that do reviews of theater and visual art and things.

But there's, you know, I think one of the things that many of those folks are missing, especially the folk who've been around a while, is, you know, we used to have daily papers that had peopl who just wrote about visual art, if you do arts shows, the Post-Gazette used to have a dance critic, right.

They used to have a classical music critic.

They used to have a, you know, several people who reviewed theater.

Right.

And now, like, there's almost none of that happening, at least in print and on some of the major websites.

We don't do it.

So, you know, we do like previews and interviews with people, but we don't really do critical reviews.

But people in the arts lik that, they want that feedback.

They don't.

And they also they don't necessarily want people telling them, oh, you're great.

That was great.

I really loved it.

Right?

That's nice to hear.

But it doesn't stop constructive feedback that they might be able to use to make their stuff better, right.

Or to make something differently the next time.

Well, so is that do you feel like WESA has sort of stepped into that role, the PG becaus even if it wasn't doing reviews, there was still a whole section on the arts, right, that both the Trib and the PG had at one point.

Oh, sure.

They were talking about the business of art.

They were talking about all the all the events that were coming up.

Right.

It seems like maybe WESA I know the city papers back, but even they don't do it as much as they did.

It seems like you're maybe the last man standing.

I mean, people say that to me sometimes.

I don't really think it's true, honestly, because there are other people out there, like there' there's websites in Pittsburgh that are like feeder websites and they review like every show that happens.

Right.

And they maybe don't have as big of an audience as the Post-Gazette used to have because they had how many hundreds of thousands of subscribers right?

Now, they all didn't read the th reviews, obviously, but so they have these guys now that are online, have a dedicated audiences looking at that.

But I don't do, like I said, theater reviews per se like critical reviews of shows.

Sometimes I'll write about a show.

After that, I'll go see it and write about it in the context of, you know, this is why this is important or interesting right now.

And of course there's some evaluative language that I'll use in there or whatever, or I'll, you know, praise a performance or something, but they're not formal reviews.

Right.

And so I don't know that, that, that we can fill that like we're very much we're an NPR affiliate, National Public Radio affiliate, and they also don't do a lot of reviews.

I think they still have some people who do like movie reviews and stuff like that, but it's mostly just like a reporting model like, here's what's happening.

You know whether it's, you know, a show that's happening or whether it's, you know, something about the business of the arts, right?

Or what's the latest thing that's happening at the Kennedy Center, right.

Last year that was a that was a big deal.

Right.

And that's that's an arts story.

But it's also many more things.

And most art stories are mor than just stories about a show that's happened too.

Right.

Are there any emerging Pittsburgh artists or organizations that you're excited about?

Anything coming up?

Emerging ones?

Well, I will say one thing that's always interesting to me is you know, for as difficult as it is and even become more difficult since the pandemic to do live performanc in some way that's sustainable.

There's there's always peopl starting new theater companies somehow like every seems like every six months.

And they're small, right?

They're not necessarily they're not, you know, theater companies with staffs or anything.

But there are labors of love.

You know, the fact that people keep doing it is very interesting to me.

I think, you know there's a couple organizations, there's a few organizations that I will point out, and they've all been around for a little while, but they seem to be sort of bucking the trend of arts groups struggling.

I'll say, like, you know, the Pittsburgh Glass Center, which you guys might know up in up in Friendship is they're expanding.

Yeah they expanded and they do now.

Now they have a different business model than a lot of arts groups do, because they have a gallery there.

And they they have a very nice galler where they show glass artwork.

But their big thing is education.

They hold glassmaking classes.

And there was a there was a Netflix show that was like a reality TV contest show about glass art.

Oh, really?

Blown Away.

Blown Away.

And this like this is a was like happened during the pandemic.

And as soon as this show came on, people got on the phone to the glass center.

I want to make glass art.

And it blew up their enrollment.

Right.

So there they were.

So and this is like karma or something, because early in the pandemic, they had to close all their classes.

They were very reliant on this earned income.

And they're like, yeah, we'r it's not great for us right now.

But then with this show, it it bounced back.

And now they are lik they're they've increased their the space in their building.

They've increased their offerings and all this other stuff.

So Contemporary Craft, which is another thing people know mostly for their gallery.

They're down in Lawrenceville, but they're expanding to, you know, and it's amazing.

They do a lot of classes also.

So they also get a lot of earned income.

There's also theater companies in Pittsburgh that are doing pretty well.

Like you guys might know, Bare Bones Productions that has a space in Braddock.

And again, there are small there are labor of love kind of kind of company and they have a small space.

But the guy, Patrick Jordan, that runs it, he's like developed an audience for what he does and he does it really well.

And people turn ou for all their shows, you know.

So these are like and these are again, these are all groups that have been around for a while.

They're not new, but they're you know, they've kind of bucked the trend in a way of the struggles of some of these other nonprofit theater groups are having.

Yeah.

Were you surprised?

I know, I know that when you were in Philadelphia and when you were in Chicago, you weren't focused on the arts as a career.

But were you surprised when you came to Pittsburgh a just how meaty the art scene is?

How how good it was?

I wouldn't have had.

But when I came to Pittsburgh, I was like 26 and I hadn't really paid attention to a lot of the thing we're talking about as art now.

So I wouldn't have really, honestl had anything to compare it to.

I think thinking back on it in the 90s and early 2000s in Pittsburgh, it's remarkable how fertile that scene was.

There were so many things going on.

I mean, you talked about like the social things like we talked about the Beehive and stuff like that, but there are lots of like independent art spaces, guerilla things that were happening puppet shows like the Black Sheep Puppet Festival was one I was going to mention in the old what's now the brewhouse was then known as the Industrial Arts Co-op.

That was happening.

That was kind of this underground thing that, you know, that that city peopl would have covered at the time.

There were other places.

There were just like all these old warehouses for people to do stuff in.

Right.

Yeah.

We could just break into them at the time and do what we wanted to do.

Kids, don't try this at home.

But yes, you could, right.

There was a place called the Turmoil Room.

Yeah, right.

And just like DIY type things and those things.

Of course, still happen.

But it's harder to do now because real estate so much more expensive.

These were happening in places where like, nobody was paying attentio and you could even like, like, you know, legitimately rent them or get access to them for essentially nothing.

And so there was a lot of that stuff going on.

And, you know, I think a lot of the stuf that's happening in Pittsburgh now kind of grew out of that scene.

Yeah, spiritually, it's no other way.

Yeah.

Do you consider yourself a Pittsburgher now are you a Pittsburgher?

I think I kind of have to like I honestly, I've never lived anywher else as an adult, so you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Do you think Pittsburgh is getting recognized as an arts and culture like epicenter?

Like, you know what I mean?

Like, do you think we get enough credit?

Pittsburghers are always going to say we don't get enough credit, right?

Right.

Or else they're going to say, leave us alone, you know, and just let us do our thing.

I think it's interesting.

You know, I remember starting to notice in the early 2000s.

That I was interviewing these local authors and stuff who had just moved from, like, Brooklyn, let's say, like, you can buy a house here for what?

And this is before the housing market in Pittsburgh exploded.

So you could buy a house for, like, a pretty nice house that was in moving condition for like 50 or 60 grand.

Right, right.

Can't do that anymore.

Even a few years later, you couldn't do that anymore.

But.

So we started to see some kind of migration happening then.

And I still see it happening.

Like there's still if you're moving from a very expensive housing market, Pittsburgh still looks very affordable, even if to people who are here, you're like, what's going on?

Right?

To those folks, it seems like, you know, and that keeps it fertile, right?

Because new people can move in and want to move in.

But at the same time, the rising real estate prices make it harder for people to do things, you know, like the Kelly Strayhorn theater here, which is an iconic place in Pittsburgh.

Like they'r at risk of losing their space.

This has been in the news.

You know that there there's other another owner of that property.

Their lease ends in a few years.

That's it's very valuable real estate.

And they're like a nonprofit arts organizations.

They're a sizable one and they're and they're very well run.

But they just not might not b able to hold on to that space.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So do you think the stor in Pittsburgh moving forward is, you know, we had these institutions, the Pittsburgh Ballet, the opera we have, you know, the symphony.

We have all these really large theater companies who have been struggling to some degree.

Right?

I mean, the ballet has been trying to reinvent itself.

The opera tries to reinvent itself, but at the same time, we have all these amazing grassroot theater organizations, you know, like you said, small but really, really active.

And really, I think finding a lot of support in the communities.

Do you think that's one of the stories of Pittsburgh?

I think so, I think it always has been in a way.

I mean, one of the things you notice about it, if you want to use th the overused metaphor ecosystem, like an arts ecosystem, there's the very big companies that you mentioned or like the Carnegie Museum of Art.

Right, which is actually like four different museums.

You know, Heinz History Center, whatever.

These organizations with big budgets, big staffs, big foot physical footprints and all the way down to like, you know, storefront galleries that are just labors of love for people or very small nonprofits, small nonprofit arts organization, you know performing arts organizations.

So I think that' one of the things you can find somebody at almost any level doing that kind of stuff.

But I would say, like as a reporter, I'm looking at things in a more fine grained way.

The problems facing, say, the symphony, are somewhat different than those facing, you know, the opera, let's say the symphony had a very good year financially last year.

They actually ended the year with a with a surplus budget surplus.

They're doing okay.

The opera like is cutting back, you know, to some degree they cut back the number of productions that they do and the number of performances of each production.

So there and they're like retrenching to some degree, operas, a very expensive art form to put on.

It's also very, extremely expensive to have a symphony because you have like 100 musicians that you're paying full time, right?

But they've they've found a way to do it, you know, and currently they seem to be handling that pretty well.

And again, even with smaller arts organizations, some are doing a lot better than others.

But I think, yeah, I think you're right in the sense that these groups that are that are doing well, like in theater, like Barebone Productions or Quantum Theater, they hav they do a very particular thing.

They found and cultivated an audience.

Right.

That knows, you know, they're not going to get exactly the same thing every time.

But if they're in for, you know, if they're in for down for Quantum Theater and they're in for like, adventurous theater, that's going to be in a different place every time you go.

And they're, they'r follow their going to subscribe, they're going to show up for these shows.

And and theyve done a great job over the years of kind of maintainin that audience and building it.

Hey guys.

It's Valerie and David with the Gen X Pittsburgh Podcast bringing you the Gen X culture drop.

A lot of exciting things going on this week that way.

I know it's a great tim to be a Gen Xer in Pittsburgh.

Festivals.

Outdoor concerts.

Parades.

Animals.

Eating grass.

This is an exciting time to be in Pittsburgh.

It is.

So what's up?

Tell me, what will we start?

Well, we're going to start Wednesday, July 22nd.

Harry Connick Jr will be performing at Heinz Hall.

And he's not just good to listen to, he's good to look at.

So you got a two for one there.

And down the street around the corner is the Tony Award winning Broadway hit.

So.

So it's going to be very busy in downtown this big.

It's going to be great.

It's going to be busy in New Kensington as well.

It will be because Stabbing Westward will be performing at Preserving Underground.

I saw Stabbing Westward last time they were here.

Do they still sound like they're 20?

I bet, I bet it was an amazing show.

I love it.

Well.

So.

Thursday, July 23rd.

Oh, A is going to be staged with Lisa Loeb.

Now it's important.

O.A.R.

is not a word.

No ballet taught me that.

A little while ago.

I did not know that I met Lisa Loeb as well.

I love her.

Oh my God, I love.

That'll be a fun show.

Love my glasses design.

She did.

I'm not kidding you.

Maybe she'll remember you.

Maybe I asked her out, but she wasn't interested.

And Petco, the anime convention.

Yes.

Anna may in Pittsburgh.

I know, it's shocking.

Really shocking.

No.

At the David L Lawrence Convention Center.

Yeah I think it would be fun to go.

And people watch because I really don't know a lot about anime.

I do appreciate it, but I think it'd be fun to go down there.

And what worse, I bored.

Watch what?

Cyborg anime.

That's sort of.

Oh, okay.

Well moving on to Friday, July 24th.

The Cultural Trust Gallery Crawl is happening downtown, and that' that's going to be a lot of fun.

I love doing that kind of stuff.

That is always amazing.

It is.

The trust does a great job with that every month, and that is definitely something that people should check out.

Yeah for sure, for sure.

Yeah.

Saturday, July 25th is Goat Fest.

Yes, Go Fest itself at Southside Park.

People are going to stand around and watch goats eat grass.

Yes, it is adorable.

It is so much fun.

I think they're going to have like some food trucks.

And it's a, it's a it's a good family event.

It's really fun.

This is a thing I, I'm shocked they eat all the overgrown ness of the area.

It's cute.

I'm gonna take your word for i is cute.

It is cute.

Well, zinc Art Gallery is going to have an exhibition in the air tonight by artist Gavin Benjamin.

And I think that's going to be really cool.

It's about the art of people watching, and it's sort of rooted in the 90s.

So right i that sweet spot for us, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And then there is Family Fest at Arts Landing.

It's really nice to see tha space get used like it's crazy.

Right.

And downtown is going to be so great this week.

I can't wait.

So that's going to be free live music from the River City Brass Band.

They are such a part of the the Pittsburgh scene.

They play in a lot of boats, you know.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They're amazing.

Yeah, yeah.

And then on Sunday, July 26th, we have a lot going on.

Arrested development will be at Hartwood Acres.

It's also Bach, Beethoven and brunch at Mellon Park.

That's at 1030.

And it's the last weekend for Freedom Farms.

Wild flower Festa mouthful.

That's a mouthful.

And you got an all out fest?

Yes.

It's where you go.

And you pick your own flowers and they have wagon rides and food.

It's a good family event.

Monday, July 27th.

Albi oxen rider for 19 years.

This will be the 19th year of his annual golf Classic.

I know, do you want to go?

I'm not, I'm not.

I'm not going to make total assets of ourself.

Nobody wants to see me golf.

Yeah.

You know, this body was not made for golfing.

Yeah.

No, I get it.

My my husband and I went to Topgolf last week, and I was so excited.

I only golf if there's, like, a duck in a pond that I have to get through.

There you go.

You're the miniature golf.

It's about it.

Yes.

And then on Tuesday, July 28th, it's Tommy Lehman again at the Art landing downtown with some jazz.

That's going to be a great night as well.

It's going to be.

And and.

Oh, the big one.

Can't forget.

It's the recording of the Jenks Pittsburgh podcast.

We are here at Potomac Station Coffee House every Tuesday about 6:00.

Check out our events page on our Facebook page to see who our next guest i and what time we're recording.

Yeah, it's a great week.

It is.

So support your local happenings and make some memories.

Yes, and don't forget wher you parked your folding chair.

You guys have a great week and we'll see you next week.

Welcome back to the Gen X Pittsburgh Podcast.

We're here with Bill O'Driscoll.

He is the arts and culture reporter for WESA.

What is the what's a big like lesson that you've learned from being a journalist?

Just from being a journalist in general?

Yeah.

I guess to be willing to always question yourself, you know, that.

You know, and question, you know, there' kind of a truism in journalism if your mother says she loves you, check it out.

Yeah, you probably heard that one.

You know, that that kind of thing, right?

You know, somebody telling you something, they seem very credible.

But you always have to be wary.

You know, you don't have to be necessarily cynical about things, but be aware that there's being aware that there's another side of the story.

And that's something that, you know, you have t just keep reminding yourself of.

And and those stories are really the most interesting to tell.

Right.

When there's there's another point of view o perspective to be found in it.

Yeah.

And so you mentioned the Civic Light opera and Public Theater merging.

Is that the what you think is going to be the biggest news story in the arts this year?

What else do you see?

I think it's probably the biggest ongoing one.

And it's really been ongoing for a while now.

Right.

Because they were in these talks with City Theater, which was the city's thir largest theater company there.

The first two, the two biggest City Theate dropped out earlier this year.

Now it's the Public and the CLO.

They're still formally technically separate entities, but very soo they're going to be one entity with a name that we don't know yet.

They've already announced their first joint programing.

And this is remember like like the the CLO was created in 1946 or something its very old.

It's over.

It's like 80 years old.

The Public is like 50 years old.

Celebrated its 50th anniversary.

So this is like a, like a big thing that like generations iteration of Pittsburgh's Pittsburghers who love theater have known.

And now it's going to be something else like that kind of programing, they promise, will still be there, but it'll be interesting one to see what they what they have.

They decide to proceed with it and what they produce and two just how it works.

Because, you know, this this is something that's happening around the country.

Again, it's not just a Pittsburgh thing.

We could talk about how the individual companies were run well or badly or whatever, but it's a fact that, like many theater companies, including longstanding large ones around the country, have gone out of business in recent years in the post pandemic era.

And it's not just because of the pandemic, as like any arts consultant that you talk to about this will say, these are like longstanding trends.

The pandemic accelerated them a little bit.

The loss of subscribers, the rising costs and all these things, it just accelerated them.

This was stuff that was coming for the the industry for a long time.

So do you know what this is going to look like?

Has there been any sor of formal discussion about will there still be the kind of programing that the CLO did and the Public did, and it's just going to be under the same company name, or is there no longer going to b that sort of robust programing?

And now it's just going to b something completely different?

It is, they promise.

So I just talked to the two people who are kind of leading the merger.

Right.

They're not going to be the people who are like the artistic directors or whatever of these companies, but they're in charge of the process, right?

And they say, and everybody who's been involved with this process said all along.

We're still going to get musicals of the kind.

The CLO has long produced like contemporary and classic musicals, and we're still going to get the kind of drama and comedies that the the Public has long produced.

Right.

These ranged from classics like, you know, it could be like, you know, Our Town, right where it could be last year's Pulitzer Prize winning play, or it could be something in between.

Right.

So they say that's going to be there.

I wouldn't expect them.

Like they're getting ready to announce actually their programing for their first full season at the end of this month, like in a few weeks actually.

So we'll have a better idea the where they're leaning with it.

But they have already announced some of their programing for this year.

They're doing a solo show.

This is actually very interesting.

It's calle How Shakespeare Saved My Life.

It's by a kid who grew up largely in Pittsburgh.

A young actor who went on to make a name for himself in New York an has done some TV work and such.

He's been touring this show around.

It's a one man show about like, how Shakespeare, as a kid performing Shakespear saved his life, or so he says.

So he's doing that at the O'Reilly theater in, I think.

And then they're doing some o their traditional holiday shows, like they're doing a musical Christmas Carol, I believe, which they they've been doing for decades.

I think.

Right.

So that indicates a little bit.

Both of those things are withi the wheelhouse of the companies where the companies that operate in the past.

But we'll know their name, their new joint name after they've merged, as well a their programing for next year in a matter of weeks.

Okay So let me put you on the spot.

So a lot of this show, we sort of talk to politicians, economists, artists about about sort of post, well about post-industrial Pittsburgh.

And so if you talk to the politicians, they're going to tell you it's the politics that that saved the city right after the collapse of the steel mills.

And the economists are going to say, what was the combination of this then that, right?

And I've always maintained, at least on some level, in a very grassroots level, tha the arts helped save the city.

So from your perch, do you get the sense that Pittsburgh was I don't want to much pressure on you, but saved by this the art scene that it had, this really robust art scene, even at the time of collaps of all the industry around it.

Yeah.

Well, I mean I didn't live here at that time.

I didn't live here until 91.

And that stuff was still playing out at that time.

Like when I first started visiting Pittsburgh, they were still tearing down the old LTV steelworks on the south side and everything like that.

So it was still very much in the kind of the, the echo of that of that era.

And there was a lot of vacant industrial space and all these things.

I think that that it probably did.

You know, I think that some of the things created a sense of continuity for the community.

You know, the Three Rivers Arts Festival has been there in one form or another for 65 years.

Right.

The fact that that was still going on one way or another, the fact that the city still had a symphony, that they still had these, you know, theater groups, that the Carnegie was still there and in fact you know, began to grow.

Right?

Because it was the 90s.

The Warhol came around, the science center came around also in the 90s, and it created this, you know, the sense of continuity and maybe even community around it to some degree.

So, yeah, I think and, you know, I want to say just like psychologically or culturally that it made a difference.

But those are two like pretty big things, although they're very hard to quantify.

Yeah.

Very cool.

Well, Bill, we're going to have some fun.

It's no time for our rapid fire rewind.

All right.

We're going to throw you some rapid fire questions.

And all you have to do is answer them.

Okay.

Okay.

You ready?

Is there a right or wrong answer?

You tell us or this is okay.

Tell us.

Iron City or Rolling Rock?

Iron City.

Favorite alternative band?

Replacements.

Okay.

Three Rivers or Heinz Field?

Oh, Heinz Field, yeah.

Favorite Gen X movie?

Gen X movie.

Yeah.

What counts as a Gen X movie?

I'm sorry to ask you a question now, but like I would say, anything that was made or about sort of the the culture from the 80s to the end to like 96, 97.

Maybe that's just me.

How about Repo Man?

Sure.

Okay.

Sounds good.

We'll believe you.

You don't know it?

No, I know.

Oh, no.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

No, I just meant well.

Believe you.

That's a Gen X movie.

That's like.

It was early 80s.

Yeah.

I think you're right.

Yeah.

Okay.

No.

If there's a mistake here, it was in my my buttress of the question.

Right.

Me deciding what was a Gen X movie.

Turner's or Schneider's tea?

Turner's.

Favorite Saturday morning cartoon?

Saturday morning cartoon.

Wow.

I'm going back now.

Was Rocky and Bullwinkle on Saturday mornings?

I don't remember if it was on i the morning, but you know what?

That works.

Okay.

Yeah.

That works.

That was a favorite of mine growing up.

Well, I can tell you.

Yeah.

So this is going to be a harder question for you, considering that you moved here and met your wife.

Right.

So.

But Donzi's and Chaunceys or Metropol and Rosebud?

Metropol and Rosebud, for sure.

Yeah.

What was your first concert?

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Wow.

That's cool.

That's the second tim we've had that, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Wow.

Southside Beehive or the Oakland Beehive?

Southside.

He lives on the Southside.

The Oakland one was cool, too.

I spent I spent some good some good times there.

Yeah.

Atari or Nintendo?

So I will say I was never a video game guy, so I actually don't have an answer on that.

Wow.

Yeah.

Kennywood or Sandcastle?

Kennywood.

Okay.

Public theater or CLO?

No Im just kidding.

Okay.

Well, that wraps up our rapid fire rewind.

Bill, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And thank you guys for joining us today.

We'll see you next week.

The Gen X Pittsburgh Podcasts hosts are David Rullo and Valerie Christoffel, executiv producer David Rullo, producer and graphic designer Kim Rullo, producer Valerie Christoffel, video production and editor Bren Music by NeoStem.