If you can never figure out what to get dad for Father’s Day, here are a few new and exciting designs from the T&A Shop that will make the perfect gift. I can’t guarantee it, but it’s highly unlikely dad has anything like this in any of his drawers. Visit the T&A Shop to see more.

This week I took my annual vacation back home to Lawrenceville. “The Ville of Kill”, “the Ward”, “dahn the street”. You know where I mean ,10th Ward baby!The former home of Frank’s Bakery, the only bakery I knew that opened at 6pm.

I spent my time downing some beers, playing some cards and reminiscing with some dear old friends. During my retreat I stopped by some old haunts, McCleary Field , the Atlantic Ballfield and the Slovenski Dom. What I’ve come to realize is young kids don’t play games outside like we used to when I grew up. I never see kids playing pick up games anymore. Unless there is an organized league run by overzealous adults kids aren’t playing. I guess it’s the allure of the video game keeping these kids inside with their Mr. Pibb and Beef Jerky. While I was sitting on the steps of the Slovenski Dom humming Sara Smile and chomping on sunflower seeds a young kid came up to me and asked me if I was lost. I explained to the young lad that I grew up in that neighborhood and this was my annual trek back. I noticed in his backpack he was toting a Playstation 2. He told me he was taking it to a friends house where they were going to play against a couple kids from Texas. I take it you can hookup through broadband and play video games across country. I never felt so old in my life. I noticed the young man had quite a large belly for a ten year old boy . I said ,If you played a few games of “Hide the Belt” you would lose some of the weight young man.” “Hide the belt!” the boy exclaimed “What are you some kind of perv?”. I realized this young man is growing up in Lawrenceville and has never played a game of “Hide the belt”. I assured the young man I was not a “perv” and explained the rules of hide the belt. Hide the belt is played with a minimum of 5 players. One player hides a belt somewhere on the premises he then picks out a “base” or “safe haven” the remaining players search for the belt. The player who finds the belt gets to beat the players who didn’t find the belt until they reach the “base” or “safe haven”. The young man just stared wide eyed at me and ran to his friends house like he had seen a ghost.

It’s a shame but some day this country is going to be run by people who never got their ass whipped in a game of “Hide the Belt”.

Re- introduce yourself to “The Jam”. Enjoy 100 Rifles with Raquel Welch, Burt Reynolds and Jim Brown.

In honor of being mentioned by Rick Sebak on the WQED webpage I would like to tell my favorite story of growing up in Lawrenceville.

In Lawrenceville it was common practice to receive the gift you didn’t receive for Christmas on Easter morning. The reason for this is the fact that we all grew up in row houses and if your parents bought you a bicycle for Christmas it sat in your living room until spring. If they bought you the bike in the spring , by the time the weather got to cold to ride it you either got your parents so angry they took it off of you and threw it away or the bicycle was stolen. The latter is what happened to my friend Eddie.

It was a beautiful spring day in Lawrenceville. As I was running down Butler Street I said hi to all my neighbors who were out on their stoop enjoying the fresh Lawrenceville air. I was running fast because I was anxious to see my friend Eddie’s new bike. Word on the street it was a black Huffy with number 53 on it but I had to see it for myself. As I passed Macchi’s Market I stopped in for a Boss of Pepsi, some Dan Dee potato chips , Marathon bar and a pack of baseball cards. Mr Macchi always dropped a pomagranite in my bag, I guess it was his way of teaching me to eat healthy. As I was walking down Butler Street chewing my topps bubble gum and looking through my baseball cards praying for a new Dave Parker or Willie Stargell, because I wore the face off of last years model in the pocket of my 10th ward little league uniform, my friend Eddie appeared. There it was just as they said The Black Huffy, #53 on the front and the proudest eleven year old boy on the seat. It was stunning. Breathtaking if you will. Eddie told me they were getting a fast pitch rubberball game together at McCleary field. He gave me a ride up to his house where we left the bike on the porch, grabbed a couple of mits and ran over to McCleary field . McCleary field wasn’t a field at all. It was actually the McCleary grade school playground but we always referred to it as McCleary Field or the field. The day was so beautiful that we decided to play a doubleheader. After the doubleheader Eddie told me he would give me a ride home on the new Huffy. When we arrived at his house the bike was gone! Not a trace! We gathered up the rest of our friends ,fourteen in total, and searched the neighborhood. We rounded up all of the usual suspects and interrogated them but nobody would talk. We must have spent two hours looking for that bike but came up empty.

Wednesday morning two days after Eddie’s bike was stolen we decided to go fishing. Our favorite spot was in the Allegheny river behind the Cold Storage building off of 57th Street. Eddie was still bumbed out about the bike but went fishing with us anyway. We took turns casting when it was Eddies turn he threw a halfhearted cast into the crystal clear waters of the Allegheny . He let his line sit in the water for about two minutes and decided to reel it in. As the line was coming in it became snagged approximately twenty feet from shore. Eddie tugged on the line a couple times but it wouldn’t budge. He went out into the water to unsnag the line. What happened next , to this day brings a chill to my spine. Eddie feverishly reaches down into the water and pulls out his bike. The black Huffy with #53 still intact. We all rushed out into the water to help him bring it in. To a man I never saw us any happier. Eddie immediately started drying the bike off using his BayCity Rollers t-shirt. We took the bike back to Eddie’s house and secured it in the basement. Eddie rode the bike for about two years before outgrowing it and donating it to the Salvation Army. To this day Eddie says that he’ll never hit the Powerball because he used all of his luck up with one cast of a fishing line but then again he’ll never get hit by lightning either.

I was driving through Bloomfield this morning and noticed that another storefront is vacant on Liberty Avenue. It’s one or two doors down from Pittsburgh’s finest pizzeria, Pizza Italia. I believe it was an antique shop or one of those skitchy little independent “art galleries” that folded. But seeing another vacant storefront on Liberty Avenue saddens me. There was a dog groomer a few doors up from there that recently relocated to Penn Avenue in Garfield, and that storefront remains vacant. The building on Liberty Avenue that housed Gordon’s Shoes for decades still sits vacant after the business relocated to the Waterfront. Liberty Avenue in Bloomfield is one of the finest neighborhood business corridors in Pittsburgh. It’s right up there with E. Carson, Murray Avenue and Brookline Blvd., and in many respects is more appealing than any one of those (if you can look beyond the red, white and green painted parking meters and curbs). Something needs to be done to transform Liberty Avenue into the vibrant business corridor that it should be and to prevent more check cashing places from moving in.

The problem with the revitalization that has occurred on streets like Butler St. in Lawrenceville and Penn Ave in Garfield, and partly the reason why so many storefronts in Bloomfield are vacant, is that most of the new businesses are of the artsy-fartsy variety: art galleries, offbeat clothing stores and coffee shops. Although the proprietors of these shops are certainly not in business solely for the financial rewards, one has to realize that these are not the types of businesses that generate steady income. People that spend money regularly on things like art pieces and custom designed clothing tend to be wealthy or at least have deeper pockets than the average Joe who frequents the Tobacco Outlet. Generally speaking, these wealthier types tend not to shop on Butler Street and are hesitant to park their BMW’s on Penn Avenue in Garfield (with good reason). My point is that, while these artsy-fartsy stores are great signs of vitality, creativity and commitment in and to the city, as well as a tangible sign that the American dream of owning a business is both possible and alive, these types of businesses don’t offer long-term stability.

But fear not, for Anthony has the answer, and it’s incredibly simple. One word: sandwich. To all those entrepreneurs considering opening up another beaded jewelry shop with a hip name, open a shop with the sole mission of making a good sandwich instead. One blatant void in the landscape of Pittsburgh is the existence of establishments where a person can get a good freakin’ sandwich. Sure, there’s Peppi’s and Primanti’s, but a person grows tired of cheesesteaks and slaw-n-fries after a while. (I hear there are a few good sandwich places in Oakland, but I stay away from that urinal of higher education as much as possible so I can’t speak to that.) And everyone loves a good sandwich. You’ve heard people say that they don’t care for onions or liver or meatloaf, but I defy you to remember one instance when you heard someone say that they hate sandwiches.

This is so simple that it’s almost baffling that no one thought of it before. Actually, other people have tried it before but they too have gone under after making fatal mistakes, which I will now point out. The key to making a sandwich place successful is to make tasty sandwiches and nothing else. The trap that proprietors of good sandwich endeavors fall into is that they bite off more than they can chew. (No pun intended.) A shop may offer a variety of delicious sandwiches, but then one day someone comes in and asks for a salad. “Ah, salad. We should carry salads for those people that don’t want a tasty sandwich. While we’re at it, let’s offer soup as well. Maybe a lottery machine!” And that thinking marks the beginning of the end. While the salad/soup menu expansion seems like a good idea, it is not—it costs money, confuses the sandwich customer and diverts from the mission. All the sandwich greats never lost their focus on the thing that made them great–the sandwich.

All people want and can’t get is a good Goddamned sandwich—not a wrap, not a panini, not a bagel, not fast-food—a sandwich, fairly quickly and at a reasonable price. It’s not hard to do. For example, any real Pittsburgher knows that you haven’t lived until you’ve had a hamburger from Tessarro’s in Bloomfield. That little place gets so crowded every night that there’s not enough room in there to fart. They have great food, but it’s nothing fancy. They don’t even have french fries. Their success comes down to a wood-fired grill. They don’t do anything fancy to their chicken or ground meat. Everything derives its flavor from the wood grill and therefore everything pretty much tastes the same there. But it’s simple and it’s good and people love it. Tessarro’s illustrates my thesis perfectly—people love good sandwiches, and it’s easy to make a good sandwich.

There you have it. The answer my friend is lying between two pieces of bread. So if you are contemplating opening up your own business with minimal start-up costs in one of the city’s neighborhoods, drop that canvas and paintbrush, and pick up a butter knife and a jar of mayo. You can be just as creative with a palette of condiments as you can with a set of Winsor & Newtons. Help save our city.

And don’t be stingy with the cheese.