Food trucks can’t get much traction in the city of Pittsburgh because we have this inane rule that keeps food trucks away from bricks-and-mortar restaurants on the theory that they will compete unfairly if they are too close together. So food trucks have to get some special dispensation to be anywhere anyone would want to go to buy their food. 

 

There are food trucks at special events and throughout Oakland, but the city’s truculence about food trucks has severely limited the scene.

 

This is crazy. Every city that’s thriving with young people has a thriving food truck scene. What are our city officials not getting?

 

Anyhoo, McKees Rocks picked up on the closed-door policy in its big sister across the river and decided to have some ornery fun by welcoming any and all food trucks for a first-ever spring feast-ival.

 

It’s this Saturday, 11a to 7p, in the municipal parking lot and will include at least 15 food vendors, from food trucks to Rox’s own eateries. Live music, art displays and sales and colorful activities for the kiddies are all part of the feastivities.

 

FEASTival is brought to you, free, by the McKees Rocks Community Development Corp. 

 

Walking through Bloomfield’s business district on Liberty Avenue this morning, Dave Feehan, the new interim director of the Bloomfield Development Corp. pointed out all the things that are right with the retail corridor and the myriad things that need to be righted.

 

Anyone who knows Bloomfield knows what’s right: The neighborhood’s DNA is righteous, its mix of businesses, compared to most retail corridors, is enviable, and it has great bones.

 

But as we walked, noting vacant storefronts, harsh stone aggregate facades, big cheesy signs and plastic panels that enough people in the '60s and '70s thought looked better than turn-of-the-century brick, so it caught on. 

 

Bloomfield is one of the city’s great ‘hoods but it is plagued like so much of our tahn by busted up curbs and sidewalks, cigarette butts and other trash  and graffiti on prominent buildings, mail boxes, electrical boxes and the sides of bus shelters.

 

The bus shelter in the photo at the top, at Liberty and Ella, is covered with graffiti, and the sidewalk in front of it, shown at right, is just one low point of many.

 

Not to pick on Bloomfield. We see this everywhere. Is this a Pittsburgh thing? While we revel in our growing glowing reputation on the national radar, is this the look we want? It's definitely the look we have, and visitors notice even if we've become inured to it. 

 

Really? Trashy sidewalks, hideous signage, hideous facades, tacky, torn awnings?  Why do we have so many people who perpetrate this crap? And why do the rest of us tolerate it? 

 

“It’s the one area where Pittsburgh is behind other cities,” said Dave, who for the past few months has served as interim director of the Bloomfield Development Corp. He has an interesting ribbon of Pittsburgh running through his life and career.

 

Read more about him in an upcoming feature in the P-G.

 

 

On a day like today, it’s hard to imagine anyone wanting to bicycle or do anything indoors, but there are all kinds of days and all kinds of bicyclists ... and now, there’s The Wheel Mill.

 

The indoor bike park opened on April 12, and mountain bikers, BMX racers and free-stylists are already flocking. It was Harry Geyer’s dream, the first indoor bicycling playground in the state, at 6815 Hamilton Ave., and one of not even a handful in the eastern part of this country. 

 

Harry, an aficionado who also owns a construction company, began wrestling the 80,000 square-foot former fabricating plant into shape with the help of hundreds of biking enthusiast volunteers over the past year. 

 

He said about 60 percent of the space is completed and that  crews will continue to build out with a goal of having both floors finished by September.

 

“We’ve had tons of people from all over the East Coast,” he said. “There’s a huge mountain biking community in Maryland and we’re getting people from there.”

 

There aren't many indoor bicycling parks in the country but among them most close in the summer. The Wheel Mill will be open all summer.

 

The Wheel Mill got a loan of $150,000 from the Urban Redevelopment Authority, and Harry and his wife Sheila, devoted a chunk of their own money toward this venture.

 

The URA’s Rochelle Lilien, senior business development specialist, is quoted in the URA newsletter: “Harry was great to work with, and his vision and unique concept were refreshing. This is exactly the type of deal the URA loves to get involved in. We used our PBGF [Pittsburgh Business Growth Fund] loan funds to finance the gap to make this project work. The result was the re-use of a large vacant warehouse in Homewood, one of our targeted City neighborhoods, adding brand new life to the street!”

 

Harry said Saturday afternoons are the busiest time, “and anytime it’s raining.”

 

The National Bike Challenge starts Wednesday and runs through the end of September, and this year, Pittsburgh bicyclists will try to defend our 2012 status as Rustbelt Champion.

 

During the next five months, people who sign up to contribute their logged miles can help the ‘burgh beat Brownie Town.

 

The National Bike Challenge is also a way for regular bicyclists to chart their miles each day, whether they cycle for exercise, for commute or both.. 

 

Bike Pittsburgh and Over the Bar Bicycle Cafe on the Southside are the local sponsors. Nationally, the sponsors are The League of American Bicyclists, Kimberly Clark and Endomondo.

 

You can sign up for the whole challenge or at any point therein here. Include your zip code to help Pittsburgh outride Cleveland.