live blogging tuesday night from the Lemon Grove

Showing what's going on musically in downtown youngstown on a weekday . . . live tonight at the Lemon Grove downtown . . . from Brooklyn, NY - Girls in Trouble



This band has a great sound: violin, nice vocals, accordion, upright base, etc...

another clip:



As an interesting aside, the lyrics of all of the songs in their set so far revolve around "female characters in the old testament who get involved in crazy stuff."

Reason takes a look at ailing urban schools

as part of the "Drew Carey saves Cleveland" series...



you can watch the whole series here, which began yesterday.

another recent media clip came from WCPN ideastream:
"Most Ohio Schools Never Entered Race to the Top"

from the story:

"But there’s another issue, says Will Bagnola, head of the teachers’ union in Youngstown and among those who took a pass on Race to the Top funding. He says the terms of the grant demanded certain assurances from the union that his membership just couldn’t agree to.

Bagnola: Many of those assurances smacked our contract in the face. At this point our membership is not willing to go down that road to accomplish some of the assurances and to concede some of the things that we’ve been able to maintain in our contract. "

lots of interesting threads out there . . . not sure how one weaves them together to create an environment that works well for both school employees and students.

request for readers: where can downtown get a cheap (or free) bike rack?

A biking culture is starting to mature in downtown youngstown.

To give just one example, you can see groups of cyclists going together from nearby neighborhoods and hanging out at downtown establishments.

One downtown spot, The Lemon Grove, is even generously offering 20% off one food/drink item if you can show you rode your bike to the cafe.


But one thing is missing downtown which may help biking commuters and biking enthusiasts.

A bike rack.

Maybe in a secure place, maybe covered from the elements, maybe decorated by local artists.


But the first step is to get a single bike rack downtown, as currently no such facilities exist.

Do you, reading this blog, know anyone or any group with a bike rack that would be willing to donate it to downtown?

Are there any closed/renovating schools with excess bike racks to donate?

Please leave ANY suggestions in the comments area on how to reach the goal of providing secure space for future cyclists.

inside the construction of YSU's new business school

From the outside, one can see the bricks going up on the exterior of the new Williamson College of Business.

But what is shaping up inside YSU's newest building?

check it out:

$10,000 of Nanette Lepore apparel available this saturday in downtown youngstown

Youngstown native and international designer Nanette Lepore has produced stunning fashion pieces over the years.

Here are some highlights from her 2010 show:



And now you can have the opportunity to view and purchase Nanette's works in Youngstown.

This Saturday, the Youngstown Symphony Guild will host a Trunk Show and Sale featuring $10,000 of Nanette Lepore's creations. The event will be held from 11am to 3pm at the DeYor Performing Arts Center in downtown youngstown, with admission at $10 per person - those under 18 get in for free.

Advance tickets are available at the box office downtown. For more information, you can contact 330.744.0264 or email symphony@youngstownsymphony.com.

wfmj video with more information here.


nanette lepore

New York - Tokyo - London - Youngstown

new vindy fonts and layout look great, import font lecture Thursday

Personally, I am loving the changes made to the print edition of Youngstown's daily newspaper.

Wednesday brought a new size, new fonts, and a new layout to local readers.

having "The Vindicator" back in gothic font on the nameplate is the best part. It looks both classic and modern.

Less AP up front, more local.
Less black and white, more color.
More Lenten fish dinner listings.

kudos to the staff at The Vindicator for a job well done.

- - -

and if you love font and graphic design...

Matthew Carter, considered to be one of the world's most important type designers, will speak at the Beecher Center for Art and Technology at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, March 4. (at the Butler Art Museum)

Carter is a type designer with 40 years experience in typographic technologies ranging from hand–cut punches to computer fonts. After a long association with the Linotype companies, Carter was a co–founder in 1981 of Bitstream Inc., the digital typefoundry, where he worked for 10 years. He is now a principal of Carter & Cone Type Inc., in Cambridge, Mass., designers and producers of original typefaces.

His type designs include ITC Galliard, Snell Roundhand and Shelley scripts, Helvetica Compressed, Olympian (for newspaper text), Bell Centennial (for the US telephone directories), ITC Charter, and faces for Greek, Hebrew, Cyrillic and Devanagari. For Carter & Cone he has designed Mantinia, Sophia, Elephant, Big Caslon, Alisal and Miller. Carter & Cone have produced types on commission for Apple, Microsoft (the screen fonts Verdana and Georgia), Time, Newsweek, Wired, U.S. News & World Report, Sports Illustrated, The Washington Post, and the Walker Art Center.

live, from rural Shaanxi province, a seven year old Chinese girl was watching the Kelly Pavlik fight

This is a crazy story.

Of how I was able to watch live the Kelly Pavlik fight deep within rural China.

Global Youngstown.


After a long morning of driving through rural Shaanxi province on December 20, we decided to stop for lunch.


We were looking for the flat noodles that are a speciality of the region and came across someone's home - which doubled as a place to get some food.



There were no waiters/waitresses in this house, and we picked up our food from the kitchen and ate our delicious meal of flat wheat noodles, cucumbers dipped in a hot plum sauce, cabbage with hot peppers, and pomegranates we purchased on the side of the road.





It was cold in that house. Damn cold.

After finishing my bowl, I leaned to my left . . . over a charcoal stove to heat my hands.


And this is what I saw:

A young girl walked into her family's living room and turned on the television.

Right away, China's CCTV 5 came up, with none other than Kelly Pavlik appearing on the screen.

It was lunchtime in China, but live back in Ohio, the Pavlik fight was underway - this one on the campus of Youngstown State University.



Check out the mat of the ring.. "Youngstown State University"

Here's a shot between the first and second round of Kelly's Trainer, Jack Loew.



Global Kelly Pavlik.

Global Youngstown.

From rural China.

Even though Kelly has a 78-inch reach, his real reach that evening from Youngstown circled the globe - highlighting Youngstown to millions across the planet.