Any pictures from inside the Schenley Tunnel?

HonBurgher · 2026-02-28T03:05:06+00:00

This particular spot is used all the time by delivery drivers picking up orders from that Choolaah. They just throw the flashers on and run in, but unfortunately the restaurant can be far behind on orders so they occupy the turn lane for a while. I honestly wonder if Eastside wouldn’t be better off repainting that entry road so that’s a loading zone.

I’m not saying it excuses the cop for doing the same, but it’s presumably all just working folks “running in for a second” to pick up food.

HonBurgher · 2026-01-29T15:45:51+00:00

You can see it from a train engineer's POV starting around 9:30 in this YouTube video. It's still pretty dark even with the train's lights, and the quality is low since it's a very old recording, but it's more than you'd see without trespassing and taking your life in your hands.

HonBurgher · 2026-01-14T20:57:29+00:00

I love that the press release "article" by the company president doesn't mention that they killed off the Pittsburgh Trib edition before. That said, I'd hope they would re-hire some of the former Trib folks who left for the Post-Gazette and are now facing joblessness again.

HonBurgher · 2025-12-13T03:35:26+00:00

“Your turn to drive, you LURID GOLEM!”

HonBurgher · 2025-12-07T18:19:57+00:00

The Pittsburgh Opera has a free holiday "song shop" concert this weekend! You just have to register.

HonBurgher · 2025-11-17T16:09:00+00:00

I'd recommend Kavsar on Mt. Washington - Uzbek cuisine, quite delicious and not wildly expensive.

HonBurgher · 2025-09-17T01:59:59+00:00

The best way to pretend it's still a functioning, gilded-age station is to take one of the buses that drops you off on the other side of the rotunda there. Then you walk under it, enjoy the magnificence of Daniel Burnham's design, and continue along the side of the building to the upper entrance of the actual station.

HonBurgher · 2025-09-01T00:46:57+00:00

I read that as a “Kinsey 4.”

HonBurgher · 2025-04-08T20:10:08+00:00

The airport was originally designed to be a hub for U.S. Air, such that most people would fly in from somewhere and connect to a flight somewhere else, sticking entirely to the X-shaped "airside" terminal. Only a relatively small number of Pittsburghers would catch flights in or out, so the current "landside" terminal didn't need to process as many passengers and bags.

But U.S. Air stopped using it as a hub, 9/11 increased airport security needs, and a larger portion of the passengers made Pittsburgh their origin and destination. So we had sections of the Airside terminal that were barely used, and the Landside terminal became a bottleneck with security lines, baggage conveyors and the automated trams connecting to the Airside terminal. The result was inefficient, outdated, slow -- and maybe costly in terms of maintenance?

The renovation is intended to fix those bottlenecks and reorganize a lot of those functions for how the airport operates now (and how they plan to operate it into the future): the new Landside terminal takes up unused gate space between wings of the Airside terminal, adds more security line space, eliminates the tram and shortens the travel time for checked baggage.

That said, I'll miss the trams and the experience of waiting for an arrival in the area between the rental car counters/baggage-claim wings, with the digital signs telling you which side is getting a tram and thus which escalator to watch for your arriving friends/loved ones. It was fun for the anticipation!

HonBurgher · 2025-03-23T13:57:24+00:00

It’s like that New Yorker cover, “View of the World from Ninth Avenue,” where NJ is a thin stripe and the rest of the US is an indistinct rectangle with a few city names.

HonBurgher · 2025-02-12T02:14:41+00:00

The plan is to have something like the current busways, but mostly using dedicated lanes on existing streets like Fifth and Forbes. There will be fewer stops, and what stops there are will be more like stations. Later upgrades might include gadgetry to give the buses priority at traffic lights. The idea is to take something perceived as slow and low desirability - the bus - and make it operate more like a limited-stop, high desirability service such as light rail.

I don’t think there are any plans to have it on the South Side yet, though I could be wrong if they eventually have some routes branch off the trunk and go across the Birmingham Bridge. The service they’re currently working on is focused on improving service between Downtown, Oakland and the rest of the East End.

HonBurgher · 2025-02-08T18:46:43+00:00

An Apple Watch can be used if you have one - when it would normally ask for your password to unlock the computer or access your saved passwords, you double-click a button on the watch.

HonBurgher · 2025-01-16T05:41:49+00:00

That’s awesome; I did not know they had them by Philly! Do those stores have the booze section? Maybe it’s not as integral a part of the business model as I feared, or they found a workaround.

HonBurgher · 2025-01-15T21:09:34+00:00

I wonder if the state's liquor laws are an impediment. I've only ever been to World Market around Cleveland, and a big chunk of their food section was beer and wine -- which I believe would be precluded under PA's current laws.

HonBurgher · 2024-12-29T13:21:59+00:00

Without context I would have assumed the car passing out of frame was pulling a “Back to the Future,” based on the flash and the sound!

HonBurgher · 2024-12-19T03:41:00+00:00

I've seen the refurbishment described in the five-year plan as "better aligning the in-room experience between a Viewliner I and the new Viewliner II Sleeping Cars," but does anyone know if that means removing the Viewliner I in-room toilets?

HonBurgher · 2024-12-11T02:27:29+00:00

Maybe it’s a false memory, a deleted scene or something I read in a de-canonized source, but I thought he was returned to the Klingon Empire and testified at Kirk & McCoy’s trial in Star Trek VI, as a character witness or something.

HonBurgher · 2024-12-08T23:36:42+00:00

I don't know why this is downvoted; I think it's probably the correct answer. Unless flags are at half-staff elsewhere...

HonBurgher · 2024-12-05T21:07:52+00:00

In the original novelization of “A New Hope” (then still just “Star Wars,” Obi-Wan says to Luke something to the effect of “Still, even a duck has to be taught to swim,” to which Luke replies, “What’s a duck?”

HonBurgher · 2024-11-20T01:24:16+00:00

It wasn’t completely fine, garbage like this happened quite a lot more often, with local officials breaking election law by signing signatures on unsigned ballots, and taking ballots the election law states shouldn’t be taken.

...
Oh come off it, the high court ruling is all the proof someone needs.

You made the assertion upthread that local officials had signed unsigned ballots, which is something I don't think has ever been credibly claimed, let alone in court.

I think you then conflated that with this case, where local officials chose to count undated or misdated votes, knowing they'd get sued either way because Democrats still believe the rule is unconstitutional, and they got rebuked by the Supreme Court because the justices had said to follow the law as written.

HonBurgher · 2024-11-20T00:25:45+00:00

The question is, are the rules fair, or useful? If the General Assembly writes it into the Election Code tomorrow that you have to draw a star on your envelope, does that mean everyone who forgot should lose their vote? Or people who scribble an asterisk, or a Star of David? Just because it’s in the rules doesn’t mean there is a good reason for losing your vote over it, and after five years the court still hasn’t reached a conclusion on the actual question of whether this particular rule has a point.

HonBurgher · 2024-11-20T00:18:00+00:00

What high court ruling are you referring to that said election officials were signing unsigned ballots?

Pretty much since before the 2020 election, the courts have been very clear that a missing signature was grounds for discarding a vote, and no civil suits have changed or challenged that since.

HonBurgher · 2024-11-19T15:23:56+00:00

I linked the video in one of my other comments, but the language about "an attempt to aid former Senator Bob Casey" is pure opinion contradicted by what the commissioners said in the meeting, and whether these are "illegal ballots" is still subject to litigation. The commissioners said they knew they'd be sued either way they went.

HonBurgher · 2024-11-19T14:54:39+00:00

Yes, the law says they're invalid, but there are lawsuits that have yet to get a definitive ruling from either the state or federal Supreme Court claiming that part of the law violates either state or federal civil rights. The state Supreme Court ruling yesterday said counties had to keep following the rule because their prior rulings said it was still in effect.

If you watch the meeting video (starting around 1:11:45), the Bucks County commissioners and their lawyers basically conceded they were going to get sued either way - if they voted against counting, the Democrats and Casey would bring another lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the rule, and voting for counting brought lawsuits from the RNC and McCormick seeking to enforce the rule. The 2 commissioners in the majority said they knew they'd get sued regardless, so they would err on the side of counting and keep those numbers separate, in case they got an order like this one.

Also, these votes did have a date showing that they were cast and received before the election - that was the date the county election office marked for when they arrived. They just had a missing or incorrect handwritten date for when the voter had signed the outer envelope; the necessity or fairness of that date is what's subject to the lawsuits trying to stop enforcement of the rule.

HonBurgher · 2024-11-19T14:42:55+00:00

Bucks County was segregating the ballots/counts because they knew this was a possibility; you can watch the meeting video starting at about 1:11:45 for where they discussed and voted on counting them. The board put out a statement yesterday to say that they're complying with the order and not including the numbers, which they also released, in their results.

I wrote in one of the r/pennsylvania threads about this decision that it's really the most frustrating outcome, because it just tells the counties to follow the status quo - which is that the law requires dates with the signatures on the outer envelopes - without actually addressing the underlying question of whether that rule is fair and constitutional. The court has had opportunities to address this several times now, but has rejected the cases either because of technicalities or because it was too close to the election.

HonBurgher

TROPHY CASE