Powder Witch & Company

It's the arts fest! Which to give you all an idea of how long it sometimes takes between writing about a place and posting about it online, is in June. Everyone in town knows, but someone who's never been to Pittsburgh might not.

The first weekend of the arts fest is also pride. Most people in the area already know that too, but I completely forgot to mention it to my best friend when I invited them over for the weekend. (Sorry Joanne!)

So we catch the bus in and get downtown around 11. Things don't kick off till noon, but that's not a problem since a lot of the artists open up early. It's always a bit exciting, seeing whose back for another year and whose new. Especially now that I can go down a few times and see which artists rotate in on the second week of the festival.

Pride also kicked off around noon, with a parade that wound across the cultural district, over the Warhol bridge, and up to Lake Elizabeth on the north shore.

It starts with a biker gang, who stop at every block to rev their engines and hype the crowd. They're mostly an older group, as far as I can tell, and my guess is that they've been here since probably the first Pittsburgh pride. I didn't recognize any of the MC's that followed them, but I'm also just really bad about keeping up with celebrities unless they're an obvious a part of something I'm invested in, or my Mom talks about them.

There were a bunch of the usual suspects in the parade behind them: the bears, the leather crowd, the fur suits, drag queens and kings. There was a small band of pride knights, stripped of most of their armor, which was understandable in the heat. A local socialist group made it in this year (whose name I've since forgotten, sorry!), as well as the local Library system, and the Carnegie Museum of Science. And then there were businesses.

Say what you will about Rainbow Capitalism, and I could say a lot about the bigger corporations that show up every year. But It's also a means for smaller businesses in the area to get their name out.

It's also been a chance for politicians to come out and say hi to a crowd that might not otherwise care. Josh Shapiro continues the trend of the state governor coming around with the parade to shake hands and promote himself, as he has done for a few years running. What I wasn't expecting was for John Fetterman to be there. Between his health problems in the last few years, and his work as State Senator, I expected him to be busy. But there he was, struggling through the baking hot sun with everyone else.

And somewhere in the mix was a massive banner marking this as the 50th anniversary of Pittsburgh Pride. There were a few floats with dancers, and music blaring out of speakers. And a foam cannon, who briefly parked right in front of us and hosed down the whole crowd. I'm glad I brought my umbrella, because as nice as it was to cool down for a moment, it wasn't fun being covered in dried soapy water.

It was around 87F by the time the parade had passed us by, hidden in the shade of some trees by the Warhol. So I didn't even consider dragging my friend along into the tail that followed the end of the parade.

We went to eat instead. Just some fair food, nothing fancy. Fries for me, chicken for my friend. We planned on hitting Primanti Bros. later in the day, but we needed something if we wanted to make it there.

We did some shopping after lunch. I generally prefer to wait til after the parade for this, since everyone's open and I've had a chance to find most of the things I really want earlier. We'd hit around 91F by that point, probably anyway I only checked the weather again as I'm writing this, and were dying from heat exhaustion, so it was time for dinner.

It's a bit of a tradition for me, at least the last few years. I go to the arts festival, I watch the pride parade (and sometimes join in the end of it), I finish up my shopping, and then I go to Primanti's in Market Square. They're a local favorite, usually one of the first places that gets recommended to people visiting Pittsburgh. Their specialty is sandwiches, stacked high with fires and coleslaw (here meaning lightly pickled cabbage as opposed to the mayo slathered nightmare you'd find in grocery stores), the protein of your choice, tomatoes, cheese (if you want that), and an optional spear of pickle, on squishy italian bread.

I've slowly been making my way through their menu of regular sandwiches (I don't have the capacity to handle a tall boy without cutting something vital out). Last year I had an egg sandwich, which was good at the end of a long day but mild in flavor. The year before that I had a bacon sandwich, which was stacked high with rich bacon and still my current favorite.

This year I wanted to try their italian sausage sandwich. It was as good as I'd expected, I've yet to have a bad meal there, but I wonder why they used a mild sausage instead of a hot one. Next time I'm there I'll have to ask if that's an option. Despite that, the seasoning was still strong enough to keep things interesting.

I'm going to have to go back more often, now I have the chance to, so maybe we'll pick this back up in a few months.

We moved to PPG plaza after dinner to sit in the shade by the fountains, while we waited for the bus. Since, as it turns out, the problem I've been having with the bus, where it splits into two and only one of them gets me home, isn't a thing on the weekends.

I could have saved myself a whole lot of trouble if I'd been going places on Saturdays, like a normal day tripper. But I didn't. (Edit: And I found out recently that they already have plans to do away with this split. By the time this goes live it should be gone.)

Anyway we go home with no problems, and now I know better. And I didn't get massively sunburnt! So all in all, a good festival weekend.