A recent Plenty of Horne column (“Pittsburgh Avenue’s Future“) revealed plans to rename West Pittsburgh Avenue. The near-south side street, named in the 1920s after a paint company (not the city), will become home to the Milwaukee Water Council incubator. Council executives figure it’s just plain confusing to brand Milwaukee [Pop. 594,833] as the world’s Water Capital, and then run their empire from a street that would call to mind a completely different city.
I brought this to the attention of Brian O’Neill, a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and author of “Paris of Appalachia,” a paean to his home town. I feared Pittsburgh [Pop. 305,704] might retaliate by renaming its Milwaukee Street, a short lane located up in the hills of Iron City. (It’s right up there by Gypsum Way.)
Image from Denver Mayor Michael Hancock’s Facebook Page
This humiliation follows last year’s defeat of the Steelers by the Green Bay Packers in Superbowl XLV, which resulted in the loan of Renoir’s Bathers with Crab to the Milwaukee Art Museum from the Carnegie Museum of Art. The painting was on display from October 2011 till January 8th of this year as part of the museum’s Impressionism: Masterworks on Paper show.
O’Neill got into the spirit of the thing, and wrote this subscriber-only column that appeared on Wednesday, January 11.
It is reprinted here with his permission:
Mindless spats with other cities are a great way to get through soul-crushing Pittsburgh winters. We’ve generally counted on the Steelers to provide that, but now they’ve been Tebowed and we’re looking around for other diversions.
Alas, the Crosbyless Penguins are skating in circles and the Pitt basketball team’s season appears to be going around the rim and out. So it was with no small relief that I learned Milwaukee may rename its “Pittsburgh Avenue’’ to something it deems more up to date.
Game on, baby.
Michael Horne, who writes a blog for InsideMilwaukee.com, alerted me to this outrage. Seems the Milwaukee Water Council is looking to extend West Pittsburgh Avenue through some old railroad yards and wants a new name for the street as it seeks to attract “water-based industries” to the 15-acre site.
What, we ain’t got water? We’re the city of three rivers, you cheese-eating snobs! (OK, maybe that’s not insulting to a people willing to wear faux blocks of Swiss atop their noggins.)
During crises like these, I often am comforted by the stirring words of Eric “Otter’’ Stratton, rush chairman, who memorably told his brothers in Animal House that “this situation absolutely requires a really futile and stupid gesture be done on somebody’s part.”
It was clear what I must do. I contacted the mayor’s office to see if we would respond with a retaliatory renaming of Milwaukee Street in the Upper Hill District.
Yarone Zober, Mayor Luke Ravenstahl’s chief of staff and the Urban Redevelopment Authority board chairman, swiftly responded with all the seriousness demanded.
“It must be painful to be reminded daily of Pittsburgh’s six Super Bowl rings, in addition to our World Series, Stanley Cup and Most Liveable City titles,” Mr. Zober emailed. “Out of consideration for residents of the unfortunately named Milwaukee Street, we won’t look into changing its name.
“However, we are seriously considering a citywide ban on certain cheeses as well as ‘Laverne and Shirley’ reruns.”
Thus armed, I called Dean Amhaus, executive director of the Milwaukee Water Council and one of the masterminds of the Great Pittsburgh Dis.
“Oh no,” Mr. Amhaus managed after I finished reading Mr. Zober’s quote.
But there’s little chance the water council, which includes 130 water technology companies, will change its mind. It’s refurbishing a seven-story, century-old warehouse on Pittsburgh Avenue that will house not only the organization but water-related research activities for private companies and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s School of Freshwater Sciences.
The council doesn’t want to confuse things by having “Pittsburgh” prominently in the building’s address. The council, only a couple of years old, expects to have global reach “and we have trouble enough with people asking, ‘Where in the world is Milwaukee?’ “Mr. Amhaus said.
He did pretend to take “Three Rivers” into serious consideration as a new name for Pittsburgh Avenue. He said Pittsburgh had “done a terrific job” in clustering its own high-tech companies in recent years, and he’s impressed by this city’s remaking.
“We’ll see if we can get another street for Pittsburgh somewhere.”
Had he left it at that, we’d have been OK. But in a move that dripped with irony, this guy who’s supposed to be all about clean water couldn’t resist a little dirty pool.
“How are those Pittsburgh Pirates doing lately?” Mr. Amhaus asked.
That’s it. “Happy Days” is dead to me.
