Big Apple Steeler Nation

 Going to NYC for a few days next week. And since I’ll be there on Sunday, I was wondering if there were any Steeler bars in Manhattan. Stupid question. There are Steeler bars in Bufu, Arkansas! Certainly there are Steeler bars in the Big Apple.

The best possibility so far seems to be Hibernia, near 50th St and 9th Ave. Just a few blocks from MoMa, where my wife wants to spend a good part of the day. The first clue that this was the place?  Look at their Website:

Check out the menu of options… Photos, About Us, Menu, Contact Us, Beer, Fun, Steelers… what? That’s crazy. And there’s the Terrible Towel©, right on the front page. Suck it, Giants and Jets fans. (Okay, but they need their Web master to take down that Bengals stuff. That’s just embarrassing.)

So you click on Steelers and what do you get?

Lots and lots of photos of Steeler fans, dressed to the nines (and sevens and thirty-nines and tens…), plus a facepainter or two. Ah, it’ll be just like being at the local bar, except for the yinzer terms shouted out in New York accents: “Yinz get some cheers out on the street soz I kin pahk my cahr!”

Then, a fellow blogite turned me on to a list of Steeler bars around the world.  My favorites on the list: Steelers in Hoboken NJ; Hawaii Steelheads; Steeler Nation in Mexico; Psycho Steeler fans of Panama City, FL; and Tulsa Steeler Fanatics… to name just a few. Will have to bookmark Steelers World in Germany  as that might come in handy for a trip next year. It’s great to know that just about anywhere you wander, yinz ain’t far from home.

End of week musings:

• Read where an architect wants to save the Igloo and turn it into some sort of park and ice skating rink. Not sure what I think about that. Maybe it’s one of those structures that is so ugly that it’s beautiful. Kind of like how the French viewed the Eiffel Tower when it first marred the pristine skyline of Paris in the late 1880s. The Hill District Consensus Group brings up the fact that, to some , Mellon Arena can “symbolize the destruction of the Hill District community….There are a lot of people who don’t want to see any parts of the arena.” Soooo, good to know there will be something else to fight about after the new arena is built.
• This just in: apparently, movie popcorn and soda is bad for you. Uh-huh. The worst seems to be Regal Theaters (supposedly the nation’s largest chain, but not here) where a medium popcorn and soda = 3 burgers and 12 pads of butter. Holy schnikees. Much better at AMC Theaters where a large popcorn has 1,030 calories and 57 grams of saturated fat, the equivalent of a pound of baby back ribs topped with a scoop of Häagen-Dazs ice cream. (Although, what flavor best goes with ribs, I’m not sure. Probably Chubby Hubby.) Mmmm. Ribs. Anybody else getting hungry?
• I guess Troy Polamalu spent a night at the White House in order to film a PSA with the Prez. The footage shows several NFL players playing touch football with kids on the White House lawn. Wouldn’t it be great to see this cute little kid running with the ball and a couple of players pretending to miss tackling him… then, out of nowhere, in flies Troy to totally wipe the kid out. Not hurting him, you understand. Just sending a message: Not in our house. I can only imagine that the Secret Service had their snipers on the lookout for that creepy Head and Shoulders reporter who is Jonesing for Troy’s hair. Who’s got the shot??
• 1,000 people turned out at the Waterfront for the opening of New Moon. Yeah, I don’t have teenagers, so the  whole Twilight thing missed me, as did Harry Potter. I do know that Roger Ebert is not a fan of the new film. I don’t always agree with Ebert’s reviews, but I always enjoy his writing. For this one: “Sitting through this experience is like driving a pickup in low gear though a sullen sea of Brylcreem.” Wonderful.
• Twenty-five years ago, cable TV was just making the scene. Nobody thought much of it. Just a bunch of channels that no one would watch. Now, it looks like Comcast is in talks to buy NBC. And, as a sign of how things have changed, they’re not really all that interested in the fourth-place network programming. What they really want are NBC’s cable TV holdings: CNBC, USA, the Weather Channel, SyFy. Welcome to Bizarro World, where up is down, left is right, AOL bought Time Warner, Chrysler is owned by Fiat, and the capitalist United States is owned by communist China. That sound is my grandfather spinning in his grave.

Well, as much as I’ll miss Pittsburgh, it’ll be good to get away from all the talk of tuition tax, library closings, hospital closings, and all things Luke Ravenstahl for a few days. Hope to have a few thoughts from Gotham next week. Go Steelers. Happy Light Up Night!