Rust Valley

Pittsburgh is great. People here are friendly, there are tons of things to do, it’s affordable, and so on. I’ve said it all before here. But one thing Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania does not have is low taxes.
We moved here from New Hampshire, the state with the second lowest per-capita tax burden in the [...]

[Read more →]

Last weekend we had a housewarming party in Pittsburgh.  We invited everyone we knew (and several people we didn’t) to help us figure this town out.  Our guests were incredibly generous with their time and expertise. The suggestions range from where to eat, to the best places to take your kids. There are recommendations for [...]

[Read more →]

Perhaps the best life hack I’ve ever been involved with. This genius algorithm was invented by my partner, Beth, and it solves that basic problem that anyone who moves to a new town has: where the heck is the $X here (for values of $X to include (”dentist”, “zoo”, “mechanic”, “Thai place”, “cheap [...]

[Read more →]

Pittsburgh is on a Public Relations Bonanza. The New York Times published an extremely positive piece about Pittsburgh (that I commented on previously. Now  USA today has published two articles about Pittsburgh in the past week alone. Whoever the city hired to do PR for this summer and the ongoing Pittsburgh 250 celebration is [...]

[Read more →]

Even our would-be-leader, Presidential Candidate Barack Obama is getting into the Pittsburgh spirit.  In a NY Times article about Obama traveling the nation Obama opines:
“I’ve been struck by how many beautiful places there are in the country that you don’t necessarily think of as beautiful. Pittsburgh, for example, is a really handsome town with the [...]

[Read more →]

Mike Shanley has what I regard to be a practical and really interesting idea of the problem of giving early access to music to reviewers over at his blog, shanleyonmusic:
“Tell ya what they ought to do. Buy some old shellacs and an old record cutter and press up promo copies and mail that out to [...]

[Read more →]

Just as with the Sonya Labs posting about Pittsburgh that I wrote about yesterday, a significant number of friends, family and colleagues pointed out this story about Pittsburgh in the NY Times over the weekend.  The feature has some nice praise for Pittsburgh:
“[T]his city of 89 distinct neighborhoods is a cool and — dare I [...]

[Read more →]

I recently wrote about the Alpha Lab incumbator funding several companies in Pittsburgh.  Yesterday, Shimon Rura, a former colleague of mine at Babbledog, sent me a link to the blog at Sonya Labs, one of the Alpha Lab fundees, and specifically, a nice writeup about the state of startup funding here in Pittsburgh.  Sonya Labs [...]

[Read more →]