Posts tagged features

Finding Frankie’s

A few years ago there was a guy named Nathan who lived among the warehouses just below Butler Street in Lower Lawrenceville.  Nathan was blind, and he didn’t make a point of venturing outside the neighborhood very often, but nearly every day a curious aroma of onions, and grease wafting through the neighborhood would lead Nathan toward Frankie’s Extra Long.  All he had to do was follow the smell.

“He’d come up here almost daily for a six pack and hot sausage,” explains current owner of Frankie’s, Rick Zenk.  “And he’d find his way up here from the alley back there and up to the door here at the bar.”

Nathan’s sense of smell may have gotten him to Frankie’s, but sometimes finding his way home was a bit more difficult. 

“A couple of times, if he had a couple beers, he’d get a little disoriented and he’d wander out into the middle of the street,” says Zenk.  “I’d have to come out and point him in the right direction.”

Even though he had a hard time finding his way out, his friends at Frankie’s could rest assured that he’d have no trouble finding his way back tomorrow afternoon.

On the 35^th block of Butler Street, situated next to a neat little antique shop, you’ll find the unassuming yellow brick building whose blue-collar appeal is almost as strong as the smell that led you to it in the first place.

Frankie’s has been drawing people in for over 60 years now. Zenk and his family have run the show for the past 21 years.  And while the neighborhood has evolved over the years, the business has changed hands only twice.

“It was started,” Zenk explains, “by a gentleman who lived up the street, Lou Nease. And he had a partner; his name was Frank Dalicandro.

“I heard one story where it opened on New Years Day of 1950… Now, I don’t know if that’s true or not.

“When they opened up they were actually across the street.  And they had four more locations too.  There was one in Garfield, and there was one out in the east end.  I’m not sure where the others were.  I’m not sure what happened, but the partnership ended and this is the only remaining one.  [After that] it was run by a gentleman up the street and his family; that was until about 1986. Then we purchased it in October of 1989.”

Zenk, like virtually all of the employees at Frankie’s, first came to know the place as a customer.

“I grew up in Stanton Heights.  I used to come in here when I was in high school cause one of my friends used to go to St. Augustine’s.  And we’d come down and eat here.”

Some years and gray hairs later, while he was browsing through the newspaper one morning, he came across a listing that would change his relationship with Frankie’s.  “Me and my buddy saw an article in the classifieds.  It said ‘Lawrenceville fast food for sale.’

“It started out like as a joke about purchasing it.  So I started to talk about it with my brother and my wife… and it started out, we said, ‘hey, take a look at this place…’

“So we came down to take a look at the place…and we showed interest in buying it, and my wife and I actually decided to come in to work here for a couple days without pay just to see what it was like.  The volume was there and the business was there.  The place is a landmark.”

As Zenk and I are talking at the weathered wood-top bar, his son, who helps out with odds and ends around the restaurant, shouts over, “Did you tell him it’s like Cheers?”

Zenk cracks a smile and motions toward two middle-aged guys sitting at the end of he bar near the door.  “These guys over here come in and they have the same seats, the same spots… They come in at the same time and leave at the same time.

“It would be unnatural to see these guys up here,” Zenk explains as he points toward the other end of the bar.  “This is where they sit.”

Frankie’s feels like Cheers in the way that Cheers really was Cheers.  This isn’t the kind of place that got a reputation as a landmark because it was featured on a TV special, or because someone arbitrarily named it the home of the best hot sausage in all of Pittsburgh, or even because they name their food after local sports heroes.  They don’t need to.  The hot dog is called a hot dog, and the sausage, a sausage; and both are delicious.  You’ll smell like onions when you leave, but like a traveler with a sticker on your suitcase, everyone will know where you were.

Generally, smelling like onions would be undesirable, but when you work at Frankie’s it’s more like a badge of honor.  As you might imagine, the workers have developed a kind of immunity to the smell after working there for so long.  Nikki, a relative rookie at Frankie’s, has been around for only 6 months now, but the place has already made its impression.

“No matter what, we always smell like onions.”  She laughs to herself as she packs up a customer’s order.  “The bed, the sheets, the pillow - no matter how many times you wash them – you always smell like onions.  It comes out of our pores!”  She hustles behind the counter, taking orders, filling orders.  She shouts to the other cook, Melanie, “I need two hotdogs and a sausage.”

Melanie’s been around a little longer – well, a lot longer if you count her days as a customer. “I’ve been coming here for probably 26 years,” she says. After coming to Frankie’s for so long, the transition into working there was natural. “One day my aunt asked if I wanted a job, so I started working here!”

Melanie looks over about half a dozen burners and a couple fryers, all of them continuously cooking the big three items at Frankie’s – hotdogs, hot sausage, and of course, onions.  If you look above the relatively small cooking area, you’ll see the grease stained ceiling tiles.  They’re the kind of stains that are strangely comforting; they let you know that what’s being prepared there has some kind of life of its own.  It is a mark of the first steps of the smell from its origin on the old silver burners that eventually floats up through the vents, down the streets, and weaves its way in-between the houses of Lower Lawrenceville.

The neighborhood is changing, and with trendy restaurant’s like Tamari and Piccolo Forno popping up all around, you might think that the crowds have gravitated toward the kind of places you’d more closely associate with Lawrenceville’s recent renaissance. 

But it hasn’t really played out that way. In fact, Zenk is excited about the recent changes. “When we bought this business here that was towards the end of the 80s when all the mills around here were starting to go.  There was no problem getting a parking space. Now we’re getting a new influx.  There’s Tamari up the street.  There are other upscale restaurants coming in here.  It seems to be a popular area!”

While the other restaurants in the area really come alive in the evening - after the young professionals are done doing whatever it is they purport to do, and hipsters are, well, just starting their day – Frankie’s concentrates on another crowd, the lunch crowd. 

For those working in the warehouses along the Allegheny and the boutiques along Butler, lunch at Frankie’s has become a staple. And for those unlucky enough to actually crave the cruel and teasing grin of the half-hour lunch break, Frankie’s gives you a damn good meal at a price you can manage with the kind of job that only gives you a half-hour for lunch.

Those in a hurry use the door on the right, and those with a little more time – some who might use Frankie’s as an alternate address – use the bar entrance on the left.

“There are city workers who can come in here with mud all over them, and be in line with businessmen with suits on,” Zenk explains.  “There’s nothing fancy about it.  The food’s good and it’s cheap.”  Fancy isn’t usually a word you’ll find in the same sentence as Frankie’s. 

In the bar, the walls are painted a thick bright green, and the dropped ceiling tiles have all the charm of a high school cafeteria.  But when you get your hot sausage with an intimidating pile of caramelized onions that’s slowly seeping into the bun, you’re not looking at the walls or the ceiling; you’re trying to figure out how to get that sandwich in your mouth as quickly as you can.  And after you unsuccessfully try to contain the sandwich, you may even find yourself contemplating licking the spilled remains off the weathered wood counter.  But at these prices, why not just order another?

A young couple, both clad in skinny designer jeans and the kind of ironic t-shirts that will flood The New Amsterdam later that evening, step out of one of the new brightly painted, freshly renovated boutiques of Lower Lawrenceville.  They reveal themselves as tourists when the man pulls a folded up map from his back pocket.  They’ve undoubtedly heard about Lawrenceville from either some hip local friends or one of the numerous New York Times articles singing the neighborhood’s praises.

But before they have time to investigate the map’s contents any further, they’re hit with an oniony smell that’s caught in a westward wind sweeping down Butler Street.  Like all good tourists they decide to follow their instincts, or more accurately, their stomachs, and figure out the source.  They arrive outside of the humble brick building, turn to each other, and the girl asks, “Which door should we use?”

Pittsburgh’s Inexact Translations

If you read the Magazine section of yesterday’s Post Gazette, you may have noticed an ironic pairing of articles about the new, and inevitably disappointing sitcom set in Pittsburgh, “Romantically Challenged.”  The first article, “Love for Penguins behind City’s setting for ‘Romantically Challenged,’” explains creator, Ricky Blitt’s crazed enthusiasm for Pittsburgh Hockey, while the review immediately following the article begins, “The first thing for Pittsburgh viewers to know about ABC’s ‘Romantically Challenged’ is that it does not feel Pittsburgh-y.”  

So why is that Pittsburgh so often fails to translate with any degree of accuracy to television or film?  Or, maybe more accurately, why haven’t many people tried to make this translation?  

It seems to me that most of the time films and TV shows think of the city in two of the following reductive forms: 1. Pittsburgh as generic mid-sized city OR 2. Pittsburgh as “Hell with the lid off.”  Where the former makes no effort to consider the “place-ness” of Pittsburgh, the latter relies on out-dated stereotypes to construct the “Flight from [insert unsatisfactory hometown here]” narrative… Can’t blame them for trying, though, right?  

On the other hand, there have been a handful of films as of late that have utilized Pittsburgh more fully (think Adventureland, Mysteries of Pittsburgh, She’s Out of My League).  The city, in these films, is not presented as a caricature, nor is it used merely as a scenic backdrop; the place is intimately connected to the protagonist.

Of course, I don’t mean to make any kind of value judgement about these films based solely on this criteria - after all, I’ve been kind of unfairly using a lens of realism to examine genres that don’t strive for realism - but we are left with a number of questions concerning the way artists and writers develop these thumbnail sketches of our city - one of the biggest questions being, to what degree are steel and sports our inescapable representational modes? 

Pittsburgh 2050: 2010

Over the last few months I’ve been missing.  Well, teaching’s not the only thing that’s been keeping me busy lately; I’ve also been spending some time in the future.  Yes, that’s right, I’ve borrowed Doc Brown’s DeLorean once again to take a trip into Pittsburgh’s future.  But seeing as we’re heading into a new year, I thought I’d let everyone know, in this 2010 edition of Pittsburgh 2050, what they can expect this year.

• The city begins to take public transportation seriously.  After a night of watching Seinfeld reruns, Councilman G_____ proposes a citywide rickshaw service operated entirely by the city’s homeless population.  It doesn’t work out.
• The city begins to seriously consider it’s homeless population. (see above)
• While digging the North Shore connector, workers discover a strange and mysterious box.  When they open it, they find the ashes of Pittsburgh’s pocket book and a kilo of wasted time.
• Pittsburgh residents are thrilled to find out that yet another big Hollywood picture will be filmed in Pittsburgh.  However, they are later disappointed when they learn that it is a Matthew McConaughey movie.
• Ben Roethlisberger grows a mullet.  It is later captured and given a permanent home at the Pittsburgh zoo where it breeds with Jeff Reed’s mustache.
• Due to a scheduling error, the Pirates face a local little league team.  They lose.  Fortunately, no one is in the park to witness it.

Seriously though, it’s going to be a good year.

Room for Romanticizing: What’s in an Abandoned Building? (Part II)

Read Part I here

So, what did I mean?  In what way is an appreciation for the Pittsburgh aesthetic anything like the thrill we get out of watching a Rob Zombie movie? … okay, maybe not a Rob Zombie movie, but you get the idea.  At what point is creepy cool?

While I was traveling these past two weeks, my friends and I made a point to stop at places along the way that are more or less unanimously considered “beautiful” or awe inspiring.  Take Yellowstone National Park for example.  Every year millions of people flock to the park to catch a glimpse of something beautiful, something unique that has been preserved there - In other words, a place where life has endured and continues to thrive, a place not unlike a booming metropolis with preserved ethnic neighborhoods.  But as you drive through Yellowstone, or any other national park on the west coast for that matter, you’ll inevitably come across a piece of forest that has been ravaged by wildfires - a lifeless and desolate shell amidst the flourishing land of which it was once a contributing part.  So why do people still stop to look and take pictures of these grim, inhospitable pieces of land?  Why do some of us write about creepy Carrie Furnace as much as the New York Times writes about the preserved authenticity of, say, Bloomfield.  When we see these “creepy places,” we find ourselves uttering the same word we did when we caught our first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains - “Wow.”  Sure, it’s the difference between the “wow” we give to someone who’s just completed a marathon, and the “wow” we give to someone who just lost their job in a mass layoff.  And in this sense, our reaction is one that is dictated by surprise and to a greater degree scale.  But our reaction and our curiosity, I argue, has much more to do with what’s there, what’s not there, and what will be there - In other words, questions of Absence, Presence, and Potential.

Stay tuned for Part III: Absence.

Room for Romanticizing: What’s in an abandoned building? (Part I)

Recently I had the pleasure of giving a grand tour of Pittsburgh to a couple of friends visiting from Boston.  Although we didn’t make it to Carrie Furnace (sigh), I was sure to show them some key points among the remains of our Industrial past while giving them a personal and cultural thumbnail history as best I could.  While we were walking along the Allegheny near the CMU Robotics building in Lawrenceville, my friend, a fellow fan and student of the old, the rustic, and the abandoned, remarked about a rusted out piece of equipment along the railroad tracks, “This is SO cool.”  Then paused and asked,  ”Do you think we’ll ever be able to stop romanticizing this stuff? Why do we like this?”

Giving the question about same amount of consideration I might have given it if he’d asked me what I wanted for lunch I responded, “Probably for the same reasons we like horror movies.”  He looked at me with a polite look of confusion and we moved on.

I had no idea what I meant by that, really.  But in the days following, the memory of that answer began to haunt me (see what I did there).

Pittsburgh 2050: The Transit System

Recently, I was fortunate enough to stumble upon Dr. Emmitt Brown’s fabled Delorean time machine.  After some coaxing, I convinced him to let me take it for a spin, and check out the future.  He was reluctant at first, and said he’d prefer for me to stick to visiting the past, but once I assured him that I would refrain from purchasing any sports almanacs or doing any kind of gambling, he handed me the keys and sent me on my way.  What a nice guy.

Now, I know I’m not supposed to be telling everyone about what the future is like - after all, it could disrupt the time space continuum - but I think all Pittsburghers should know what they’re in for.  Right?

So here it is: the first installment of “Pittsburgh 2050”

Recently, a lot of us have been wondering what Pittsburgh’s transportation future is going to look like.  The North Shore Connector is almost complete, but the city seems far from adopting a comprehensive light rail system.  Well, I’m here to tell you there’s hope!  In August of 2050, the finishing touches will be put on the final portion of tracks running from Lawrenceville to Giraffe Park (Highland Park was renamed in 2035 when a heard of superhuman giraffes escaped from the zoo and demanded a portion of the land be named after them). The city system is surprisingly complex and consists of over 300 miles of track.  Some argued that creating stops at every other block within the city limits was excessive, but due to the unusually high rates of morbid obesity across the country which have been most likely caused by the 25^th generation iPhone, a device that now performs most daily tasks for an individual, the frequent stops are all too necessary.  Unfortunately, as a result, it now takes an hour and a half to get from Heinz Hall to the convention center.  The Port Authority is considering reducing the number of stops once the 26^th generation iPhone is released, which Steve Jobs, who recently reemerged from his cryogenic freezer, promises will perform hours of exercise for the individual, all while looking fabulous.

The last PAT bus made it’s final run in 2040, and has been added to the transportation museum, where visitors now recall the good old days of those “quaint little buses.”  A visitor remarked after seeing the bus, “I miss those days.  I miss everything that’s gone.  I like missing things.  I can’t wait to miss the light rail system.  Ahh… It make’s me nostalgic just thinking about it.”

But while the rail system was only fully completed ten years prior, the city council is already making plans to update the transit system since right after it’s completion teleportation technology was developed and implemented in all other major cities across the country rendering the light rail system obsolete.

Pyrotecnic…Ohhh!

As I read through the newspapers and watched the local news last week I noticed that one particular story garnered a surprising amount of coverage.  I’m talking about the city’s decision to go with Pyrotecnico instead of Zambelli for this year’s 4^th of July fireworks display (You were expecting me to say Michael Jackson?).

The whole controversy - if indeed you can call it a controversy - got me thinking about some bigger issues concerning local production, loyalty to the local, and of course… Pittsburgh’s infatuation with blowing stuff up!  Now, Pyrotecnico is a local company and all, but… well, it’s not Zambelli.  I don’t consider myself a fireworks connoisseur by any measure, but a lot Pittsburghers take these big explosions and bright lights pretty seriously.  So, how about you?  Were the fireworks up to par?  Are you avoiding this question because you’re scared to reveal your inner yinzer?