new signs going up this week in downtown youngstown

wow, these look great!

Youngstown . . .

"a great university town"

"a top 10 city for new business"

"welcome to the city"

congrats to those who made the banners possible.

a ja taka dzivočka

the bunny that defended youngstown's easter

The Wick Park Neighborhood Association (WPNA website here) successfully launched a new tradition in the city - the Wick Park Easter Egg Hunt.

On hand was a 6 foot easter bunny...


Students from nearby Ursuline High School were instrumental in the success of the event, volunteering time to help kids with arts and crafts throughout the day.


A great diversity of people made it out to this historic neighborhood on the North Side.














more bunny videos...










The next meeting of the Wick Park Neighborhood Association will be this Monday April 19th at 6pm at the Unitarian Church. The agenda includes:

Housing/Street/Safety:
- Wick Park Neighborhood Input/CDBG Program
- Housing Update, North Side Citizens' Coalition Update
- Arson Suspect Update
- Weed & Seed Meeting Recap
- MVOC Corner Store Analysis Data, Grant Writing Volunteers ($500 Grants)
- Land Bank/Code Enforcement/Zoning Code Update

Other Projects/Events/Announcements:
- Wick Park Project, Senate Leadership Tour & Mayor's Presentation in Pittsburgh
- Wick Park Easter Egg Hunt Recap
- Farmer's Market Update
- Grey to Green Festival Planning Meeting Recap
- Fairgreen Neighborhood Garden - Garden Party (Thurs, April 22nd - 4-6pm)
- Concert @ Peace House (4/28/10) & Music at Madison (Dorian Books) - Upcoming Performances
- Wick Park Neighborhood Spring Clean-Up - Set Date
- Neighborhood Assistance Projects - Peace Pole, Wick 6 Building

all looking to improve this section of the city welcome...

wyrazy współczucia i jedności w żalu po zmarłych

"words of sympathy and unity in the grief of the dead"


Polish President Lech Kaczynski and many of the Poland's highest military and civilian leaders died tragically this morning when the presidential plane crashed as it came in for a landing in thick fog in western Russia killing all 96 on board. The distinguished group was making the 1.5 hour flight to participate in the 70th Anniversary of the Katyń massacre.

To honor the Polish leaders who died tragically in the plane crash, a special mass will take place at St. Stanislaus Kostka, located on the south side at:
430 Williamson Ave.
Youngstown, OH 44507
Sunday April 11, 2010 9:00 AM

Military veteran honor guards, Polish folk dancers in authentic costumes and officials of the Polish American community - who have received coverage of late for their divisions - will unite to honor this loss.

about to jump on the wrta bus . . .

damn, I love this commercial:



what a lift!

six foot tall Easter Bunny to participate in Wick Park's first annual Egg Hunt saturday

A large six foot bunny will be a host at the First Annual Wick Park Easter Egg Hunt on saturday. (april 3, 2010)

Designed for kids between 1 and 10 years of age, the event will commence at noon - all registrants to meet at the Wick Park pavilion.

This event is sponsored by the Wick Park Neighborhood Association (WPNA), created in 2009 in order to address a broad base of issues that affect the quality of life in the Wick Park neighborhood. WPNA is dedicated to grassroots community organizing, green initiatives, historical preservation, and education. Students belonging to the Community Service Club of Ursuline High School will be volunteering at the event.

For more information on WPNA or the 2010 Wick Park Easter Egg Hunt, visit www.WickParkNeighborhoodAssociation.org

in today's wall street journal . . .

 Youngstown Ohio

Center City of the Emerging 

Cleveland-Youngstown-Pittsburgh TechBelt

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.

with $650M investment by French/German company V&M into Youngstown, the words "marcellus shale" should enter everyone's vocabulary

The news has been reported many times this Monday, but just to repeat for our friends worldwide...

The French/German company of Vallourec & Mannesmann Tubes, headquartered in Paris, announced today a $650 million expansion project in the city of Youngstown.

communiqué de presse (in français) ici.
press release (in english) here.

from the release for this direct overseas investment:

"Vallourec, leader mondial des solutions tubulaires premium, annonce aujourd’hui qu’il va construire une nouvelle tuberie pour petits diamètres à Youngstown (Ohio, Etats-Unis)."

continuing...

"The exploitation of unconventional gas resources has revolutionized the US gas market and, thanks to new technologies lowering extraction costs, has become a sustainable source of gas supply. Shale gas production typically requires an increased number of wells, horizontal drilling and sand fracturing at high pressures. This implies higher volumes of small diameter alloy pipes, with an increasing proportion of premium connections. "

"[The Youngstown project] will complement the range produced by Vallourec in North America and will consolidate the Group’s leadership position as a provider of competitive and fully integrated premium tubular solutions. Ideally located close to major shale basins (eg. Marcellus), and combined with the Group’s other operations in the vicinity of other shale plays, this new facility will benefit Vallourec’s customers in the US."

Youngstown's proximity to the Marcellus Shale was mentioned at the press conference today and through the company's press releases as one of the major reasons for choosing the Mahoning Valley.

But what really is the Marcellus Shale?

In a few words, the Marcellus Shale is a ginormous natural gas field which can be a major future source of energy.

The website geology.com presents an excellent overview of the Marcellus Shale, and wikipedia provides the following map of where it can be found in the US:


However, perhaps the greatest source online about Youngstown's opportunities with the Marcellus Shale can be found at two blogs, the Greater Youngstown 2.0 blog and the Burgh Diaspora blog.

The author's posts, for months now, have hit home the energy opportunities for a global Youngstown.

essential reading for sure.

YNDC chooses three neighborhoods for initial focus

The newly formed Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corporation (YNDC) has announced it will concentrate certain pilot projects within three distinct neighborhoods in Youngstown.

The neighborhoods are Idora (south side), Lincoln Park (east side), and Crandall Park North (north side).

More information on the YNDC's programmatic efforts can be found in the Business-Journal's article here.

But taking glance at these neighborhoods from above, what do you see?




or the Garden District neighborhood:

100 high-tech jobs offered in 100 days

here's the title of the press release:

"Technology Services Company Selects Youngstown as Kickoff City for “100 Hires in 100 Days” Campaign"

Looking at the key points...

support.com uses an innovative model that combines a cloud-based technology platform with a geographically distributed workforce to provide expert computer and technology assistance.

To qualify for the job you would need:
- A PC with minimum 3 GHz processor and 1 GB RAM with 1280x1024 minimum resolution.
- Minimum OS of Windows XP SP2 with latest security patches applied.
- Broadband connection (1 MB down / 384 kbps up)

More good details on the positions at the Youngstown Renaissance blog here.

is it possible for Ostatki 2010 top Ostatki 2009?

The group Polish Youngstown threw one hell of a party last year.

It's thrilling to see a local event done so well with such attention to detail - the quality of the the food at the Youngstown Club, the graphic design effort put into the printings, the chamber music, the games, the prizes.

This year, on February 6th, the carnival continues at Ostatki 2010.

Here's a tour of the sights and sounds from last year:

- - -

First off, you walk inside downtown's Youngstown Club, and the smell of Polish food and the sounds of violins greet you.

Every person is handed a passport. In the interior, the regions of Poland are identified, and you're able to get a stamp in your passport for every sample of Polish beverages you try.



Here's a video of the beverage stations, with Polish beers and chilled vodka:



You'll notice the camera shirts to the food at the end of the clip, so let's review the spread:


You've got steak, potato pancakes, kapusta, ribs, kielbasi, homemade bread, pyrohy, swinie stopy . . . it keeps going.


chilled borscht, to serve in bowls with crumbled hard boiled eggs and small pickles:


and sweet, sweet herring!


After the chamber music, the dj with the polish tunes started up.



At some point, the paczcki came out. Inside one of these donuts is a small statue. If you picked that donut, you won a membership to the Youngstown Club.


To select a winner, the paczcki parade commenced:





This year's event will also have a vodka cocktail contest by local Youngstown bartenders.



Ostatki 2010 is on Saturday, February 6 at 7pm downtown at the Youngstown Club.

Tickets for the food, music, contests, drinks is $30 if you reserve by Jan 29 to 330-719-0415. Otherwise, it's $40 at the door. Semi-formal attire.

So can Ostatki 2010 top Ostatki 2009?