Brookline Unveiled! (Liberty, Industry, Troy: houses, school, casino)

[beastyR]

Brookline celebrates revitalized boulevard - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Diana Nelson-Jones of the PG was kind enough to sit with a few of us to talk about the revitalized Boulevard and our plans for the festival. Everything starts tonight - see you there!

[Goodjules]

Originally Posted by beastyR

Brookline celebrates revitalized boulevard - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Diana Nelson-Jones of the PG was kind enough to sit with a few of us to talk about the revitalized Boulevard and our plans for the festival. Everything starts tonight - see you there!

Thanks for all your hard work making this happen. I'll be there tonight.

[JimboPGH]

Friday night at Brookline Pub was a blast. Bad Custer might be my new favorite Pittsburgh band, and Grand Piano was a lot of fun. We need more shows like that on the Blvd: it makes me giddy having friends from the East End come down to Brookline to see bands (not to mention us 20/30 something Brookliners and Dormonters spending our Friday night down here instead of in Bloomfield or Lawrenceville).

Saturday was just a terrific street fair and a wonderful way to show off our unique business district and diverse (culturally as well as ethnically) neighborhood. Anytime I can get a veggie dog with sauerkraut and a pile of Italian ice in Pirates helmet, I'm content.

Thanks to anyone who may be reading who put forth the effort into helping this happen. My wife and I both look forward to getting more involved with community events in the future.

[beastyR]

Thanks for the kind comments Jimbo! We had one hell of a time putting this together and are incredibly lucky for the good people that throw down on events like these.

Now for a shameless plug:

If you are interested in helping with events like these, events like Taste of Brookline, cleaning up the community, creating effective business growth plans, or just listening and seeing what's going on around the neighborhood, you are invited to the monthly board meetings of the South Pittsburgh Development Corporation (SPDC). SPDC's mission is to grow the community by supporting the Brookline Boulevard business district, through our mission crosses into a lot of different areas. We are an Economic Development South member organization and a 501(c)3 nonprofit. We sponsor neighborhood programs like the aforementioned Taste of Brookline, cleanup days, Dogi Pots, the anti-littering poster contests, the fabulous BrookLINE newsletter, and more.

The meetings are open to the public, though board votes are only for our board members. We encourage anyone to come, to be heard, to take part, and to have fun. We also tend to go out for drinks at the Brookline Pub afterwards so that we can talk casually without formal board voting and whatnot.

The meetings are on the third Monday of the month, 7PM at the United Presbyterian Church right on Brookline Boulevard, behind the cannon. We do not meet in July and August, but please, if you're interested in getting involved, come on out. A shocking amount of us are under 35 and we will pull you into our cult of civic service and community engagement, we promise.

[doo dah]

That reminds me, I wanted to start a thread with links to neighborhood organizations and development corps.
beastyR, if there is a link, will you add to the thread once I get it going?

[beastyR]

Surely.

[Goodjules]

I went to Brookline Unveiled on Fri night. Completely forgot that smoking is allowed in Pittsburgh bars. YUCK! Total turnoff. Music was excellent at all venues. Wish PA would outlaw smoking in public places. We've had it for well over 20 years in CA. People were up in arms and predicted doom if law was passed. Law passed and people still dine out and go to bars. I'm guessing that I'm in the minority who would like to see this in Pittsburgh. But I simply don't (intentionally) go to places that allow smoking. And I'll bet there are others like me who take our $ elsewhere. I know that places that serve food don't allow smoking and I choose those places to spend my money.

[PghYinzer]

Originally Posted by Goodjules

I went to Brookline Unveiled on Fri night. Completely forgot that smoking is allowed in Pittsburgh bars. YUCK! Total turnoff. Music was excellent at all venues. Wish PA would outlaw smoking in public places. We've had it for well over 20 years in CA. People were up in arms and predicted doom if law was passed. Law passed and people still dine out and go to bars. I'm guessing that I'm in the minority who would like to see this in Pittsburgh. But I simply don't (intentionally) go to places that allow smoking. And I'll bet there are others like me who take our $ elsewhere. I know that places that serve food don't allow smoking and I choose those places to spend my money.

I think a lot of people are like you, however when this smoking "ban" was passed it was met with a lot of resistance from bar owners. I avoid smoking venues at all costs, but sometimes it is hard to do if you are going to a specific event. They also get around the serving food aspect of the law, because I believe more than 40% of your total sales have to come from food in order to not be allowed to smoke. A lot of places, esp in South Side, sell a lot of food, however thier liquor sales are so large it shrinks the numbers to below 40%, thus allowing smoking.

This is just an example of how it played out....

Pittsburgh, PA: Restaurants fuming over smoking ban

"It's our position that in a free society, this decision should be up to the individual restaurants, not the government. Restaurants who want to ban smoking should be welcome to do so, and customer response will determine if they are right or wrong."


As for Brookline, open a smoke free bar with craft beers, a good whiskey drink, and live music and you could definitely attract a sizeable crowd.

[beastyR]

I just sit on the porch at the Pub. Sometimes there are smokers out there, too, but it all blows away pretty easily and there are fans. Plus you get to people-watch those walking the Blvd. The porch at the Pub is where it's at.

[grapeh8]

Originally Posted by PghYinzer

I

As for Brookline, open a smoke free bar with craft beers, a good whiskey drink, and live music and you could definitely attract a sizeable crowd.

I thought for a second Moonlite was going this way. They got rid of smoking, started to get a small amount of craft beers in, then when they reopened the back room it was full of giant pool tables. Seriously who puts in pool tables? They don't bring in any money and actually cause you to lose money because most people don't want to be in a place when they keep having to move for the 1 or 2 people playing pool.

I did see the old rug store is under construction so maybe something will happen with that.