What’s going on this weekend, April 25-28? Find out here. Know of a cool event? . Friday, April 26: Gallery Crawl in the Cultural District 5:30-10 p.m. Spring into art at this quarterly open house showcasing 13 venues with visual art, performances, hands-on activities and 13 public art projects. Don’t forget to look up to experience a whimsical outdoor work created by Pittsburgh-based artists Lenka Clayton and Phillip Andrew Lewis. Featuring 200 multicolored, kite-shaped aluminum sculptures “crashed and trapped” in 80 trees, “A Sudden Gust of Wind” is installed along Liberty and Penn ave ..read more

Construction recently began on three new affordable homes in Garfield as part of an effort by City of Bridges Community Land Trust to develop at least 22 permanently affordable homes throughout the city. This marks the first fully affordable homeownership transaction in Pittsburgh resulting from $8 million in federal New Markets Tax Credits the City of Bridges received and the first fully in the state since 2009.  New Markets Tax Credits incentivize community development and economic revitalization by attracting private investment to distressed communities.  The Garfield transaction ..read more

Two things to know about Pittsburgh’s May Day Marching Band: You’re likely to encounter them not just on May 1, and if you listen long enough, they’ll inevitably get you marching, whirling, jumping, twisting, dancing in full-tilt jubilation along with them. May Day Marching Band embraces the rousing street music styles popularized by New Orleans’ second line tradition, Philadelphia’s Mummers, the Mas Bands of Caribbean communities in Brooklyn and Queens and pretty much any band at a Carnaval celebration anywhere in the world. With a fluid lineup of 15 to 20 members, May Day’s instrumentation ..read more

May signals the much-anticipated arrival of blooming landscapes along with a return to the outdoor event season. There’s so much more going on this May, so be sure to check out our Weekly Event Guides for more things to do all month long. And don’t miss our music coverage for all the details about signature spring festivals like Pittonkatonk and the Millvale Music Festival. Here are 10 of our favorite things to do in May. “Left Alone Rhapsody” film still courtesy of JFilm. 1. JFilm Festival at Carnegie Music Hall of Oakland, Oaks Theater and CMU: May 2-12 The region’s largest Jewish ..read more

Since 1931, the World Affairs Council of Pittsburgh has promoted the understanding of international issues. After a strategic review process in 2020, Executive Director Betty Cruz says the nonprofit found that many people it connects with are disconnected from the global economic impacts and communities in the Pittsburgh region. “A lot of times, folks are thinking of global issues and how you have to go outside — and that is important and necessary — but also, what are the global opportunities that are happening in Pittsburgh right now, and how can we better connect folks to them?” Cruz says ..read more

PNC Park and Kennywood aren’t the only places plating up for the summer. As the weather warms and flooding subsides, nine new restaurants and food events are now or soon to open in Pittsburgh. If you’re looking for a caffeine fix before your meal, check out who you and your fellow readers voted the best coffee shop in Pittsburgh: Queen Beans Cafe in Coraopolis. If you think Coraopolis isn’t “Pittsburgh enough” because it’s 25 minutes out of Downtown, take that up with your fellow voters, not me. Order’s up! Closings Dave and Andy’s Homemade Ice Cream 207 Atwood St., Oakland After 40 years in ..read more

Looking for a new job? Check the NEXT Job Board every week for openings across the Pittsburgh region in a range of fields and industries. Hiring? Post your job here to get in front of more than 20,000 local job seekers weekly. And check back every Monday for the latest job openings in Pittsburgh. IT and Engineering Emerson Power & Water Solutions seeks a Senior Cybersecurity Field Engineer to solve problems associated with the operations of digital, analog and hybrid control systems, subsystems and specific control and cybersecurity equipment at customer locations. CGI has ..read more

John Buerkle missed his big moment. But he can catch it again during the next big rain. Heavy storms that dropped more than 2.5 inches of rain on April 11 set off a flash flood watch, and Wightman Park faced the first full test of its new stormwater capabilities. The Squirrel Hill park has always been a natural water collector. Before the renovations, even after a week of dry days, the field at Wightman Park would be muddy. The wooden play equipment was removed after carpenter bees made it a home. Buerkle, the president of North Side-based landscape architecture firm Pashek+MTR, worked with t ..read more

Decades before the first Earth Day in 1970, Pittsburgh was home to a few perceptive dreamers envisioning a cleaner, greener future for the notoriously Smoky City. One was Haniel Long, English Department chair during the 1920s at Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University), who wrote a whimsical 1,100-word short story for the June 20, 1923, issue of “The Nation.” “How Pittsburgh Returned to the Jungle” traced an extraordinary series of unintended consequences sparked by a rogue piece of legislation that transformed gloomy industrial Pittsburgh into a globally acclaimed, p ..read more

At last year‘s CIO of the Year event, much of the conversation was about how the IT leaders earned their finalist status by effectively ushering their organizations through the pandemic. Times have changed since then, and casual conversations with the 2024 CIO of the Year finalists hardly touch on the pandemic.   For Kathleen Lovett, vice president and chief information officer at VSP Vision, it’s been a year of transition. She was a finalist both years. The emergence of ChatGPT into the mainstream, combined with a broadening of her role at her company, pushed Covid technology risks ..read more