On Saturday, July 19, 2008, the moons and stars will converge on Braddock.  A collaborative series of events between Carnegie Museum of Art and Braddock will take place as the sun begins to set, causing reverberations that will be heard around the world … or at least above the din of the steel mill’s booming vibrations.  This and future blog postings will offer some insight into my thoughts about the event, the community of Braddock, Pittsburgh's arts scene, and the catalytic potential of collaboration.
 
My favorite early memory of Braddock revolves around Hidy’s Café, a popular resident establishment located under the Rankin Bridge.  Named for its friendly proprietor and longtime Braddock resident, Hidy’s also happens to be one of the best burger joints in town, dealing up large and irresistible cheeseburgers nearly the size of my face.  The spirited Mayor John Fetterman and his loyal Deputy Mayor Jeb Feldman are regulars there, and it was as their guest that I first tasted Hidy’s formidable fare.  Burger revelry aside, the particular formative recollection revolves around my first visit, whereupon a simple sign typed on white ledger paper and stuck to the door warned that all entering customers dealing in drugs would be asked to leave the premises.  And then it listed them … all of the different drugs, and many of them.  I was endlessly tickled by the sign’s blunt pre-emptive nature as well as its thorough prose (leaving no stone unturned along the Bill Clinton-esque lines of what really counts as an illegal substance).  The story itself encapsulates Braddock’s mentality: raw, tough, straightforward, but also open to new visitors, so long as they come with good intentions.  Like Hidy’s, the community is indeed rough around the edges, with large quantities of abandoned properties and a tendency for bleeding businesses, but it is also full of raw charm and no small amount of potential, its mesmerizing landscape consisting of row after row of old buildings full of spirit and history, long views of the water, and Pittsburgh’s last, amazing, behemoth of a steel mill, the Edgar S. Thompson.  This is the setting for my introduction to Braddock, and the birth of the collaboration that would become Out of This Furnace….
 
Heather Pesanti