Larryville 'pool'ing help for Gulf Coast
The Accordion Pool Party last summer was only the beginning of a new life for the decommissioned Leslie Park pool in Lawrenceville.
On Saturday, you can plunk down $10 to attend or $20 to attend and participate in a Zumbathon and help raise money for the Gulf Restoration Network, a non-profit organization based in Louisiana that has been working for years to protect the gulf’s wetlands, which were threatened enough before the BP oil spill.
“Spillapalooza,” the Leslie Park Pool Collective’s fund-raiser, is from 12:30 to 7 p.m. If it rains, the event will jump to Sunday. The pool is at 4700 Butler St.
The event is the brainchild of FedEx employee Shane Freeman.
It will include live music and Zumba, a wildly energetic fitness dance; a demonstration of how an oil spill affects wildlife by Steven Sarro, director of animal programs at the National Aviary; raffles and product sales and refreshments.
Admission donations are $10 for Zumbathon participants; $10 for festival attendees and $20 for those participating in both the Zumbathon and the festival. Net proceeds will benefit the containment and clean-up efforts of the Gulf Restoration Network. Learn more about the GRN at www.healthygulf.org.
Spillapalooza is one of a series of events the pool collective is staging in its effort to find a continuing use for the decommissioned city pool. Future events now being planned are “DEEPEND,” a dance party on July 24 from 6 p.m. until dusk (rain date July 25, 1 to 3 p.m.), featuring live instrumental classic and modern surf music; bands you can dance to, such as Daikaiju, Kabuki Surf from Alabama, The Action Cats and the Wakening; and classics sixties sounds and zombie surf music. That event is funded by a grant from Lawrenceville Corporation’s Mainstreets Community Event Microgrant Program.
On the heels of DEEPEND, on Sunday, July 25, from 8 to 11 p.m., Google Pittsburgh will sponsor a star party, starting with a chamber concert by Lawrenceville resident Jonathan Cordle and friends. Volunteers from Pittsburgh’s Amateur Astronomers Association will supply three 200-lb. telescopes for people to see the heavens, and Google software engineers will demo their Sky Map application which lets users locate and name planets, stars and constellations just by pointing their Verizon Android phone to space.
...not finished.
The collective is also planning a collaborative event with BikePGH to celebrate BikeFest in August, including a bike swap, an I Made It! market and the Pittsburgh showing of the Disposable Film Festival.
Kind of puts my summer plans to shame.