Draft Takeaways, Improving Traffic Enforcement & Punxsy Phil’s First Pitch

0:00This is CityCast Pittsburgh. I'm Megan Harris, and here's what Pittsburgh's talking about. Hey executive producer Mallory Falk here. I am with CityCast Pittsburgh contributor Colin Williams, also managing editor of CityPaper Hey Colin. Hello. And our interim social media manager, Laura Tutsui. Hey Laura. Hello. Happy to be here. Laura, you are official NFL draft correspondent. Unfortunately, I was sick. I was not able to make it down, but you were there on the ground. So I am excited to hear about your draft experience. I know my family would cackle in a horror. I'm not the most football person. However, I think that's telling of what kind of an event it was. It was not just for the football fans. Yes, that I think was one of the big takeaways from the draft. Today we are going to be doing a whole postmortem on the draft, what went well, it could have gone better.

1:01We're going to be talking about an idea to make driving better in Pittsburgh. We're going to be talking about the sorry state of our air quality. And in our special bonus segment just for CityCast Pittsburgh neighbors, we are explaining what the deal is with that ghost toilet on the south side that has been the talk of red at this week. I know we've talked about toilets recently on the member segment. I promise to listeners here that that's not always what we talk about on those segments, but I personally am really excited to hear the tea on this thing because anybody who's walked down Carson has probably walked past this unobtrusive public restroom with vines growing over the closed door. Yeah, this was apparently once hailed as the toilet of the future, and I'm looking forward to diving in not literally into what the history is there. Yes, we've got a very special guest joining us for that segment who knows the whole history. And again, this is only for neighbors. This is a special perk we've rolled out recently where our CityCast Pittsburgh neighbors get bonus content every week on the Friday show.

2:08It's part of the ad free podcast feed. And if you want to hear the fascinating story about this toilet of the future, you can become a CityCast Pittsburgh neighbor right now for $10 a month or $100 a year at Pittsburgh dot citycast dot FM. It is the absolute perfect time to join because we are in our membership campaign right now. So you don't only get this bonus segment and all of the other great perks we offer like invitations to members only events and a curated events listing every week. But right now during this campaign, you also get a beautiful CityCast Pittsburgh yellow pen and it's like that kind of sports flag that you can hang on the wall or wave around when you're out in public. If you want to promote your love of Pittsburgh among all of your friends, this is only available during our campaign. So it is the perfect time to join. Can I just say you all have been really keeping the swag game strong recently. I continue to love wearing my parking chair hat out and about. And this pen is a really cool perk.

3:11Obviously, everybody in the city has something black and gold in their home, but I love the I love the Ryanness of this that it's a nice. He was gesture toward Pittsburgh patriotism. Yes, it says I live here on purpose. It has an icon of a cardigan and a little nod to Mr Rogers. I think like this is the season when everyone's doing spring cleaning. So if you're like packing up, I don't know some poster you've held on to since college. And now you need to reflect to the world that you're not 23 anymore. Consider this pen and is the perfect replacement for your wall decor. Yeah, I'm really excited to get this and put it on my wall. I have a lot of like home pride like originally from California. So I have some things from California on my walls, but I live here now, but I don't always want something like honken Pittsburgh in my own. This is where I live, but this is I think the nice like little subtle thing. I also want to add that I am a member. I'm not just interim social media manager. And I chose to join because this team genuinely makes me feel more connected to things. I've been to these member events pre working directly with the team.

4:18And those events are so fun. It's like being in a special little club where everyone cares a lot about the city and things going on. But it's not an exclusive one. You don't have to be on the outs. So I hope that our listeners also join as members. As Mallory said, you can join at membership dot citycast dot FM and get this super swaggy pennant. Yes, Laura, we love having you in the neighborhood. And you know, of course, beyond all of these great perks by becoming a neighbor. You are supporting citycast Pittsburgh. So we can be here for years to come bringing you the critical things you need to know about Pittsburgh. And being part of this media landscape that we're so excited about. We're so excited that you know city paper is back in an action. You can go to the site and read articles there. You can come over here and here are takes on what's happening in the city. Like we want a vibrant local media landscape here in Pittsburgh. And by becoming a citycast Pittsburgh neighbor and supporting all the other great outlets out there.

5:19You are ensuring that that can be the case for a long time. Yeah, don't delay. Get after it. Well, speaking of things to celebrate and of Pittsburgh celebrating itself. We just came off of the most hyped highly build extremely black and gold Pittsburgh weekend of all time. And I have to say by and large, it really seems like the NFL draft, which is what of course I meant by all that was was a pretty big success. I think it kind of lived up to at least some of the high expectations that Pittsburgh had coming in. Yeah, I think even exceeded some of them. I think a lot of people were surprised by how fun it was who were initially planning to like hide out and stay at home. Some people still did hide out and stay at home. And I think, you know, the one criticism I have seen has been some small businesses not benefiting as much, which will get into. But like all told, I feel like this really is being framed and experienced as a success. Like people had a great time. Pittsburgh was at its sunniest best, which is always very iffy and April.

6:22No major security incidents, anything like that. Like it just seems like we really pulled it off. Yeah, absolutely. It was beautiful. I went to Thursday and Friday events to go take some pictures, talk to people. And oh my goodness, so many humans on Thursday. So if you and I went to Nova place, which wasn't technically inside of the draft footprint. But you know, getting there, we took the tea, the tea was packed, like sardines, it was insane. And I was a little like, oh my god, everybody's here. This is amazing. Nova place, there was a makers market, but then within the draft footprint itself, so many activities for people to do during the day. Because obviously the draft itself, like the event of like when players were getting, I guess, signed a teams wasn't during the day. So it was like, what are you going to do all day? And you were going to go and like into all these little seemingly like fair spaces. It was very cool. Just purely by the NFL's metrics. I mean, the numbers here are pretty eye popping. They're saying 805,000 people attended over the three days.

7:25That best of Detroit's previous record by about 30,000. They had 775,000 in 2024. And the day one attendance was 320,000 people. So the one sort of grain of salt I have with this is that these aren't unique visitors. And per one report from front office sports, which is kind of an insider industry publication. They said that the league counts everyone who entered the official draft locations, both the North Shore and around Acresure Stadium, as well as Point State Park. So like my actual question coming out of this is, and I don't have a clear answer here. Did they count people twice if you were at the point and then you left and then you went to the North Shore? Because I think that the footprint may be created an opportunity for some creative math, shall we say. But it definitely, it still seemed like an awful lot of people. I'm not saying I'm just asking questions. Yeah, no, I mean, if you were going into like an official draft event, you like went through a metal detector.

8:28And I only went into one, but like was around for a bunch of it. So I kind of like, oh, I guess if I had just been beatbopping around, I wouldn't have been counted at all. But to your point, Colin, like, yeah, I'm curious how many bodies were here. Not just people going into one thing and then leaving and then going into another and being counted multiple times. Megan noted for us that she was only scanned once, like I was, even though she went to things all three days. She also noted her father got through accidentally with some box cutters. They were like really being strict about having clear bags only. But like, I guess those were in his pocket and they didn't, I'm not really sure. So kind of questionable almost they were using the metal detectors and what the security was like. But as you said, like, we didn't hear about any big security breaches. Obviously her dad didn't do anything about it. Trim the grass. I also heard people saying that there was a lot of very proactive litter cleanup that people were doing a good job of like not making a horrible mess.

9:30And I have to say I went in with expectations of the Kenny Chesney concerts of years past. It really didn't seem like that. Today, I was just downtown today and it is spotless down there. Market Square looks squeaky clean. Colin, you just like made a connection for me because I have seen people talking about like, oh, all of these Pittsburghers, they hit out. They did an attend. We can't stand like minor inconvenience and people missed out by not attending. But I think we all just have collective PTSD from the aftermath of Kenny Chesney concerts. Yes, there was also a lot of messaging we were getting from official channels of traffic. It's going to be a nightmare. Don't be out on the road. But maybe also just our past experiences with this singer performer made us a little more hesitant than we should have been. We were on our best behavior for sure. Well, and the reality is I was on the roads and I was like, it's amazing. I'm getting from where I live in the east end to downtown in record time. I had a lot of friends who were told they could work from home in order to not, you know, clog up the streets, which was crazy to me.

10:36I do think that people really avoided the roads and, you know, the official ridership numbers aren't out for this. But it seems like most people who were in the area chose to use Pittsburgh Regional Transit. A lot of the park and ride lots filled up really early. Those free football flyer buses that were running about every 15 minutes to half an hour or so were seemingly really full. And also I was really surprised to see this stat in preparing for the show today. Apparently people took about 11,300 Pogo rides over the course of those three days. So that's a pretty healthy number for our wonderful bike share system. And I just, this really shows what a beautiful multimodal transit future we could have in Pittsburgh, which is something I think I'll touch on a little bit later in the show. Yeah, I want to say thank you sheets for the free tea rides. Someone that Sophia and I overheard said they like took their RV and camped in raccoon Creek State Park. And then like, I guess took the tea in, which I was like, yes, that's how you do it. That's incredible.

11:36So yeah, totally with you, Colin, it was like a really lovely way to enjoy the city without a car. It was very cool. Well, on the sort of more negative side of the draft, we just published an article about this and a couple other area outlets have been on this beat as well. But if you were outside of the draft footprint and you are a small business, you probably did not have the weekend that you expected. So our reporter, a conch jogger, while found that there were shops that were basically overprepared in a lot of ways. They were expecting a big business bump and some of them, including some businesses at Novo Asian Food Hall, ended up actually not being able to use a lot of what they had purchased. There were some businesses that were able to donate some of the food that they have. But there were others that basically just had to eat the loss. They paid for additional staff. They paid for tents. So that's a bit of a shame for the businesses that were in neighborhoods like the strip district that were pretty close to the draft action, but really didn't seem to see a lot of spill over. And even per WTAE, there were some strip district businesses who went all hands on deck and got a bunch of t-shirts printed and things like that and said that they lost money on the apparel.

12:43So apparently people were really willing to pay for the $20 beers and whatever merchandise they were able to get inside the draft boundary. The thing is with all this that I find useful to know is that this is the case in Kansas City as well. And it seems I've heard anecdotally that Green Bay and Detroit had similarly concentrated expenditures by the people who visited the draft. So yeah, it's a bit of a shame for our small business community that not everybody got as much sort of outside traffic as they had expected. But I also want to say I feel like this was sort of a mismissed moment. I couldn't really say from whom, like where we all just hyping draft, draft, draft. And so we didn't think about like what really that means. But you know, I spend a lot of time in station square and I knew that they were like in a bump, parking prices like crazy in anticipation. And while I think the hotel was really full, the parking lot was empty. The parking locations around I like read some reporting also that they like brought down their parking prices because we were all taking public transit, that kind of thing.

13:47And so on Friday, Megan and I took a bike ride from market square up to the strip and biked around. And it did not seem the craziest it could have been, which was kind of disappointing. We just it seemed like a pretty typical mid Friday, not a lot going on. Perhaps even empty or from there. And that's I feel like I've heard kind of two different things that have happened. And one was businesses over preparing, expecting this big influx because of the draft and ordering more merch or ordering more food. But then I think there were also businesses that were just kind of expecting a typical day and got less business and saw like less traffic than they normally do. And I think, yeah, the conversation has been like, well, people really heated this call not to go out. And so restaurants and other parts of the city, you know, that that weren't expecting to get like a ton of draft spill just didn't get like their regular customer base. We heard from folks who had locals canceling reservations on them. So like Figenash on the north side, the Nunchung soupdumpling spot on the south side.

14:49They actually had a lot of people cancel reservations ahead of the draft. And so there were some businesses that were kind of expecting a normal business day and ended up having a kind of a subpar business day by even a normal weekstandards. I will say though, like one, I don't know if I want to say when, but one flip side to all of this is there was a lot of leftover food we're talking about restaurants over preparing. And thankfully we live in a place where there is a nonprofit dedicated to rescuing perfectly good, but like not usable in its original intended purpose. So for one to food rescue has already recovered more than 30,000 pounds of leftovers and expects to collect 60,000 pounds of leftover food when only said and done and they redistribute that food to food pantries food banks. You know, if they can send it to another business that we'll use it, they can, which is really awesome. So if you and I went to a dinner hosted by them on Sunday that served us delicious rescued food.

15:49That's what they told us it was and I was like, this is incredible. And then they had like a panel talking about the stigma around using rescued food. So like frankly, I think if you say like I got this food second hand, you might be wondering like, how old is that? What's going on here? I don't know what either of you, if a restaurant said this menu is from rescued food, would that like be interesting to you guys or not? I mean, I would say that's actually maybe more interesting to me in some ways like my college cafeteria was really good about turning yesterday's pasta buffet into some sort of pasta salad dish the following day. And I have to say I admire that mindset of just repurposing this stuff because it really is senseless to waste food. I mean, we all do this at home and there's no reason why trained professionals couldn't do so in a perfectly healthy and as you said Laura delicious way, if done right. Colin, I am mostly there with you, but when you time out your school cafeteria repurposing food did just give me a flashback to cheeseburger chowder, which was the previous days hamburger meat just like floating in a cheddar soup.

16:54So, but I have not said gross, but I have a feeling that there are people in Pittsburgh who can do better, more appealing things with leftover food. I learned a lot going to this for one to food rescue event and also just kind of feel better sweet about the fact that I'm glad this food's going to a good place potentially, but also sad that like it's kind of being wasted in the first place when there's so much hunger and like that again that this miss messaging happened. So, weird, weird dichotomy here. Yeah, and I mean, I think there's just like so many numbers we are obviously still waiting on like we don't yet have that data about the total economic impact who made money, who lost money, how much we mentioned transit numbers. I also know that visit Pittsburgh is working with an analyst to really dig into those attendance numbers and look at things like where were people coming from. I think maybe like how many from out of town I'm not quite sure how they determine that but to get like more granular on who came and what they did well they were here we would love to hear from you.

18:00Should we host a draft again could we host a draft again if we were to what would you do differently and does anybody know how you get into the official NFL draft rotation like is that a thing Pittsburgh even could do. Please let us know at our Pittsburgh draft hotline the number is four one two two and two eight eight nine three. We are back and we are still celebrating what we love about Pittsburgh in honor of our thousandth episode of citycast Pittsburgh we have been compiling a list of 1000 things that we love with your help we're going to have our final list very soon for everybody we've gotten so many wonderful contributions. And of course 1000 things we love is brought to you by the Pittsburgh cultural trust their pick of the week this week is Liberty magic which is Pittsburgh's premier speak easy theater dedicated to the art of elevating magic talk about like if you want to still do fun things downtown after the draft Liberty magic is a great place to go see a show.

19:00But Laura Colin what are your picks this week for something you love about our city I think that handmade arcade and Pittsburgh's maker markets are something really worth celebrating about this community. I participated in them in the past as a vendor I shop at handmade arcade almost every single year for a lot of my holiday shopping and I just love the stuff that is on offer at those I really enjoy all the different kinds of handicrafts that you see people doing. And one of the things that I think is perhaps the most exciting about those is that there's often a hands-on component and so if you're really intrigued by seeing I don't know an embroidery or somebody's handmade spoons you can go and try it out try out embroidery or try out a blacksmithing class so shout out to all our cities makers artists and crafts people who are out there doing the good thing at all those wonderful vendor markets. I'm going to say topography I love that it's you can love our hate that it's helly I think in some ways it weeds out the week but and now that I have an ebike I can actually get up the hills.

20:00But I just find it so interesting it's really lovely to like walk my dog around and turn the corner and be like oh my gosh now there's a park and now there's this little green space and I think in some ways the topography makes us a difficult place to live but also means that there's little hidden gems and spots that are. So unique you could never find them anywhere else I fully agree with that I'm going to go with something Sophia sort of like touched on last week which is just our ice cream scene we have so many good ice cream options here. And I feel like each pocket of the city has its own special ice cream place and part determined by our topography to bring it all together but I think this is because I just recently went to Lyona's scoop shop that recently opened in Garfield where you can get like a scoop of ice cream inside. Fresh cookies highly recommend the passion fruit which I did not order someone else did and I regretted my order the entire time and of course you know always shout out pages but there's so many great spots here for so many different types of ice cream and so many different types of like whether you want to eat it under a bridge or sitting on a little bench doing people watching on pen.

21:06There is no shortage of spots and it is the time of year to start calling off with a nice cone every time I go to the east and food co up before Lyona's had a physical spot on pen I would just get like two sandwiches and then tell my partner like pick one you get one and I get one big shout out for a nice cream sandwich. And if you have something you love about Pittsburgh that you want to share with us this is the final call like I said we are putting together our final list very soon here so we will have a link in our show notes where you can send in your submission. So earlier we were talking about these you know three glorious days where we got to see what it looked like to have a robust public transit system smooth commutes throughout the city. That is not usually what it's like here and Colin you're very first article back at city paper but you're 300 by line total so congrats. Thank you actually pitching an idea for how to make things better you must feel very passionate about this to have had this be like the first thing you wanted to write the first thing you wanted to tell the world when city paper started back up.

22:11So when the paper closed I was jonesing to get back to some transit hot takes and I had the opportunity to do a lot of reporting and just reflecting and thinking about all this stuff. And as I said in this article some of that time was spent behind the wheel and I am just so over sharing the road with the ins it is gotten all bad around here. There were a bunch of crashes during the draft even with all these open roads this improved public transit and fewer jinsers out and about there was an accident involving a school bus there were people crashing into structures I know we talked about that on the show a number of times and also somebody said that it was nice to see Pittsburgh back to its old self and they celebrated that by sharing a photo of a truck that was pinned under a low overpass. So I am just really still seeing this need in Pittsburgh and one of the things that I alluded to in a past version of transit talk is the idea of separating our traffic enforcement from our law enforcement from our criminal law enforcement.

23:12Right now the Pittsburgh Bureau of police has a lot of things to deal with and that includes a lot of really really bad driving and in reaction to my piece actually somebody on blue sky said this and I can't confirm this for sure that the Pittsburgh Bureau police that PPP only has six officers actually committed to traffic enforcement at a given time. And my quip response to this of course was that they need that just for big alone there's so much driving on that stretch alone. The thing is there is there are grounds for enforcing this in Pennsylvania we have a law on the books now called Paul Miller's Law that makes it illegal for you to hold your phone while you're driving. But I see people doing this all the time like I saw a guy watching Facebook videos turning on to the West end bridge. I was behind someone the other day who almost crashed on the homestead graze bridge because he was holding a phone up next to the steering wheel. And it just this behavior is not going to enforce itself it seems like everybody feels like they're somehow exempt from the traffic laws or they're the one person who can text and drive safely.

24:17And I'm here to tell you it ain't true. Actually when I moved here in 2020 I was very surprised by how many people text and drive having moved from California that was like a law already. And like I kind of feel like it just takes time and enough people to get pulled over for it to be like you should not do that. But also like it is just so unsafe and sometimes I think that perhaps being a place where the traffic is start and stop really like lends itself to that I don't know if that's true that's Laura's hot take. But like you're sitting at a stop light you're just waiting and you're like I'll just be blue and then someone's laying on their horn behind you and you're like oh my god. But it that's not a good excuse whatsoever. But yeah I have noticed that it seems to be a particular issue here in Pittsburgh. Well and I think getting back to the topography of it all like within the city there's also not many places where you can drive super fast which I think contributes to it too. People thinking they're going out like a low enough speed that they can.

25:19I was going to say just like check their text but I guess watch like a full tick tock real to I don't know. This is actually this works perfectly to tie together some of my other past transit talk topics because I think that the long lights are definitely an issue here and there are intersections like the fifth avenue intersection with pen that could easily be transformed into roundabouts. There's the tangled mess that is the Bloomfield bridge intersection right there in the heart of Bloomfield. But I mean to the point about topography I'm just like how are you doing these hairpin turns with an iPhone held up to your face. Like it really seems very dangerous and that's where I think you know these people are running into quite literally you know your local Wendy's or a closed bank building or a hospital entrance or all these other things that I've seen come up recently. Those are not hypotheticals these are real yeah and the list goes on multiple houses churches people's porches going over embankments. But Colin I'm curious like if this is a real thing that exists in other places like is how how realistic is it to try to separate traffic enforcement from the police.

26:25So it's definitely there is precedent elsewhere in the United States. There's not a ton Berkeley California is the only city that has really made a concerted effort to do this and basically that effort has been snarled by red tape and the slow process of legislating in that particular jurisdiction. And they but they have all the law set up the plan is to start a transit agency called Burke dot the Berkeley Department of Transportation that would essentially be a civilian force. In other words they would be unarmed they wouldn't be carrying guns around there would be less of this mentality of an inherent threat in the situation. There aren't a ton of other places in the US that have tried this seriously but their Canada does this to some extent. Germany is very heavily into automated enforcement and I mentioned this but they have a very German sounding department of order that takes care of some of the things like parking violations and I hold this up as an example not because this is exactly what we should do but because it proves that there is precedent here.

27:25And as far as like why separate this from criminal law enforcement I think that that also harkens back to some other historical inequities per a public source report from 2023 they found that black Pittsburghers are roughly two and a half times more likely to be pulled over by police for traffic violations. Meanwhile there was a recent trip article that the police are very focused on the putative danger that's being posed by ebikes driving around town. It's Laura Laura. It's not me. I use my hand signals I wait at this top lights. Well also as an ebike rider myself like ice I signal and I have lights and all this stuff but even if you're riding an ebike in an unsafe manner you're putting essentially only yourself in danger. You're not going to it's very very unlikely that you're going to like crash into a pedestrian and kill them and if you're in a Ford F-150 just to pluck an example out of the air I feel like that likelihood rises pretty significantly especially with some of these trucks that have hoods like five feet off the ground.

28:32So the idea here basically that I'm sort of throwing into the ether is that if we implemented something that's more of a civil law enforcement a civilian body that could do less armed traffic enforcement. I really think that this is a way not only to improve the city's driving but we could also fill this budget hole that we keep discussing on this show. Think about if we were saddling people with $250 tickets for holding up a phone while they're driving or if we are adding speed cameras that just keep the pace of traffic lower after a few people learn that lesson with a bill in the mail you know I think we could we could kind of kill two birds with one stone here. One other driving update for you that I think is important the Pennsylvania turnpike is going to start texting drivers about unpaid tolls the summer and I really wanted to share this is like a public service announcement because I get scam you know quote unquote turnpike text all the time I just got one this week I always ignore them.

29:33But this week when I got one I went and checked my easy pass account to make sure there wasn't actually like a real alert there because the turnpike is going to start sending out real alerts so a thing that I think is good to have on your radar and a reminder anytime a state agency a bank whoever if they send you a text don't click the link directly in the text go check your account don't get scammed but be aware that you might be on the hook for some unpaid tolls the summer yes do not get scammed. We are back and we've got a shout out from a city cast Pittsburgh neighbor Laura would you like to share this week's shout out yeah this shout out comes from Chaz G thank you so much for being a neighbor he's shouting out esters hobby shop in Millvale and he says it's been family owned for generations it's the go to place for anyone interested in model trains or model building hobbies and then they also have a massive train layout in the basement so it sounds like you can get some inspiration. Which I love I love that so thank you so much Chaz I didn't know about this so I'll have to go check it out yes and if you want to shout out your favorite local business nonprofit hobby shop on the show you can do that by becoming a city cast Pittsburgh neighbor we will share it on the show and in the newsletter.

30:50Join today at membership dot city cast dot FM and reminder if you join right now during our membership campaign you also get that beautiful yellow I live here on purpose pennant this is the time to join if you have been on the fence. Welcome welcome to our newest neighbors to we are so grateful to folks who have been joining during this campaign. Welcome Katie L Amy Z Jessica T robin T Brendan R and Adam oh we are so excited to have you in the mix with us be on the lookout for an invitation to our next members only event yeah welcome friends. We are now going to move on to win a loss and a thing to know for the week Colin you've got something we should know about related to coal fired power plants. Indeed yeah our thing to know is somewhat related to our loss coming up here but governor Josh appear has moved recently to keep to coal fired power plants open here in western PA they were both scheduled to shut down in 2028 so about two years out but they are going to remain open through 2032 is some significant waste water upgrades and part of the reason for this the governor has cited.

32:02Data centers and the growth in data center needs as well as the rising cost of consumer electricity so needless to say environmental groups are not thrilled about the idea of keeping to coal burning power plants online. The keystone and conema generating stations are the ones in question here Shapiro has framed closing them as premature but Sierra Club basically accused the state of backsliding on pledges to clean up our air quality. This has been it's an interesting issue because it's at the intersection of a number of different political goals obviously environmentalists want to see these plants close down there are other groups that want to see them transition to for example nuclear energy. But Shapiro has really framed this as a boon for the state at the time when utility costs have been skyrocketing and actually the IBEW the international brotherhood of electrical workers supported this move as well. But if you read through the public comments there are a lot of people who are agreeing with the Sierra Club and are agreeing with pen environment which released a statement on this during Earth Day last week.

33:02So kind of a hot button issue here a thing to know and this is also coming against the background of other similar projects like the Homer city redevelopment project in Indiana County that would turn an older power plant into a potential data hub and there are even plans of foot to reactivate three mile island as a Microsoft data center. And that ought to raise eyebrows for anybody who is alive when three mile island experienced our country's worst ever civilian nuclear disaster. So definitely a thing to know these the push and pull of these competing forces including the rise of the data center economy are really having an effect on our state's infrastructure and potentially on our state's air quality which seems like it's not really getting any better here. Well I would say it has been getting better but it's still very bad. When you compare it to other cities bad yeah our losses that Pittsburgh on an air quality want from the American lung associations like annual state of the airport which looks at ozone and particle pollution the county's air quality has dramatically improved over the past 20 years.

34:12But the Pittsburgh region still has some of the worst particle pollution in the US and we're like consistently on like if you look at 20 worst cities with air quality it's it's Pittsburgh in there which sucks. And I will say to some people have some issues with how this data was collected and say this isn't quite fair. Yeah I think related to kind of like choosing sites with like the worst possible readings like sort of the most extreme pollution spots but I also think that's how they've been measuring things for a long time so it's consistent year to year. Yeah we're consistently bad but after it rains I'm like are so clear so small wins either way. The only thing worth noting here is that this is this is our 19th F on this air quality report we've been scoring F's for quite some time on the ALA's report so I think regardless of whether or not you are completely in alignment with how the ALA is measuring these things. The grassroots work being done here definitely reflects a lot of concern around this issue that's been going on for quite a while and we've got organizations like the group against smog and pollution gasp.

35:19There is the really fabulous app that I recommend to all kinds of people the smell Pittsburgh app where you can report smells and I think just kind of keeping local authorities feet to the fire on this issue you know we are seeing modest gains it's just you know not happening I think as fast as some of these environmental groups would like. And when you're the one breathing in the air you you want a little more than modest modest is not the word you're looking for when it comes to your own lungs. Yeah moving on to a win I mean I guess a winner a loss depending on your feelings about whether punks a tiny fill needs to just be allowed to retire and live out his life the way other groundhogs do but punks a tiny fill throughout the opening pitch in yesterday's Pirates game he's worried that if he's for tires. He's worried if you retire so he's willing to live all right and busy. Now I have a question if punks a tiny fill sees his shadow on the pitcher's mound does that mean six more weeks of baseball. Oh I wonder if there's some sort of prognostication we could do if punks a tiny fill is a harbinger of the buck tober to come under this reinvigorated pirates team or if this is the start of maybe a bleak rest of the season after a little losing skin versus the cardinals.

36:30Okay you heard it here first this is the new tradition punks a tiny fill wants to be booked and busy so now he's predicting all kinds of seasons. I think this is how we keep punks a tiny fills relevance up later in the year after groundhog day we need to bring him out every April we need to have him be a part of this baseball tradition. You know punks a tiny fill could be a boy of summer as well why we can get him a tiny jersey I see a lot of I see a lot of upside here I think this is a really great marketing plan. All right that is today's episode for everyone else but city gaspitzburg neighbors get to stick around for a special bonus segment we are bringing on an extra special guest producer Sophia lows partner and former local journalist Jacob Lazaro he did a deep dive on the history of this abandoned public bathroom on the south side that everyone at least everyone on a specific corner of the internet has been talking about this week. Like we mentioned up top it was supposed to be the toilet of the future so he's going to say what exactly happened make sure you are listening in your members only add free feed to get this if you need help you can reach out to membership at citycast dot fm and they'll get you all set up.

37:36And if you are not a neighbor you can sign up right now do it right now during our spring membership campaign so that you can listen to you can go to membership dot citycast dot fm slash Pittsburgh or go to the link in our show notes. It is $10 a month $100 a year go sign up then come back and listen this is like the perfect segment if you're the kind of person who likes to know the backstory of the thing you walk past all the time and wonder about but have never taken a moment to research yourself. That's all for today here on citycast Pittsburgh remember you can support us by becoming a citycast Pittsburgh neighbor during our membership campaign at membership dot citycast dot fm that'll get you great perks like add free listening invites to members only events and right now during the campaign that cherry bright yellow I live here on purpose pennant it is exactly what you want decorating your porch as we head into spring and summer. Our music is by Los Mocha Chetes are in Taylor Waldman all the kimonos ox jack river run dry bagel spooky tooth and the Pittsburgh opera with additional mixing by Tyler Lindgren Megan Harris is our usual host Sophia Lowe and Elizabeth comma produced the show this week.

38:51Francesca de Beco writes our newsletter and I am the team's executive producer at Mallory Falk we will be back on Monday with more from around the city have a great weekend. Lots of lemons and lots of lemonade to be made from them.