Hello everyone and welcome.

Thanks for coming back for another podcast.

I'm Valerie, that's David, and this is Gen X Pittsburgh Tonights guest is Bill Peduto Former mayor of Pittsburgh and fellow Gen Xer.

We'll be chatting politics, going undercover and wrestling.

That's right, Val.

Okay.

I can't wait.

But before we talk about wrestling, let's talk about music for a minute.

Okay.

Did you watch the Grammys?

I did.

Did you see The Cure won a Grammy?

I know the first time in what?

They've been around 30 plus years.

The first time they ever won a Grammy.

I love it I love it.

Gen X representing.

Yeah.

For sure.

And it was the only representation of Gen X. I was just going to say I think that was probably about it.

Sadly there are some people who died I think that were Gen X, but, you know, for the most part, my son had to tell me who everybody else was.

I didn't know a lot of those bands and the performers, but I did notice Yungblud.

Oh my gosh, what a cutie he is.

And I love his music.

We will agree to disagree.

Valerie, you know what?

I like a good rock band.

I like a good like heavy metal.

I you know what?

It's on its way back.

You know what?

I like a good rock band too.

Which is why I'm not into Yungblud.

Oh my God.

All right, well, we got built.

Bill Peduto waiting in the wings.

Welcome back to Gen X Pittsburgh podcast.

We are here with mayor Bill Peduto and Pat Clark and we are going to be talking about politics in the 90s, wrestling, music.

What else?

Valley.

Lots of stuff.

Going undercover I can't wait to get that right.

I swear I turned on the TV one day and I was like, I'm looking.

And I'm like, no, no, no, we're not.

You're not supposed to be supposed to recognize them, right?

But I there was something about you, right?

Like, I think I know who that is, right?

So before we get into the the mea and potatoes of the interview, the first question I think we need to talk about is the beard, right?

When you were the mayor, you didn't have a beard.

You got it pretty quickly afterwards, right?

I mean, what made you decide to do that and are you happy with it?

Is this a style that you like?

First off, this is real.

People are like, well, how come your beards gray and your hair is dark?

And in fact, I had the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama twice.

In the first time I met him, he grabbed me by this and he goes, this is black, this is white.

So that's the way God made me by the Dalai Lama.

Wow.

It's distinction.

Yeah.

So I think I grew it in 16 or 17 somewhere around then, and I might have trimmed it once since that or shaved it off.

I just like it, and I fee that it's become a part of me.

And having the two tone sort of makes it where people who don't know me or that did used to be the mayor.

So yeah, it's just it's become part of me.

Yeah.

It's so funny.

My wife was the one that pointed it out, and I don't even think of you now without the beard.

It's just part of you.

When people who have only known me with the beard see the pictures without the beard, they have a hard time believing that's me.

Yeah.

So you see this as the sort of hard hitting political show that we do, right?

We sitting here talking about beards, right?

Yeah.

So you are such a city guy that it's hard to believe that you grew up in the South Hills of Pittsburgh.

What was that like?

Oh, it was wonderful.

In fact, I'm the first mayor, I think, in over 120 years that was not born within the citys borders.

And since that time, both Ed Gainey and Corey O'Connor are both born in the city.

So it's something that's an anomaly.

But my childhood was fantastic.

I grew up in Scott Township, in the middle of a middle class neighborhood.

My next door neighbor was William Penn and the Penn girls for four girls, and I grew up with three brothers, four boy and just it was the melting pot of all of these different folks who left city neighborhoods or decided to do the 1950s experiment of the suburbs.

So I was very blessed and had a great childhood.

My grandmother was the last person to live in the city.

She was born in Homewood and raised there.

And I was the first to move back.

Wow.

Well, where did you hang out?

What did you do when you were coming up on teenage years?

Was there anywhere to hang out?

Well, yeah.

I mean, yeah, backyards and the cemetery down the street and at Foxcroft School and in the street playing street hockey.

But the folks that lived in my backyard, catty corner to my house, their dad played for the Penguins.

So Lowell MacDonald.

Yeah.

And we've recently lost a Lowell in January.

But Lowell Junior was one of my best friends growing up.

His brother Lane was a year below us.

Lane won the Hobey Baker Award.

That's the Heisman Trophy for hockey.

He played on the 88 Olympic team, was drafted into the NHL but had concussions.

And during my summers after we lost Roberto, the Clemente family moved down the street and I played Little League with Roberto Junior and I friends with him to this day.

Wow.

That's awesome.

So it was a charmed childhood.

Yeah.

I had no idea that they lived in the.

Yeah.

So there was a little street called Orchard Spring where several of the houses were rent.

So in the winters, Bobby Walden, the punter for the Steelers, was renting the house.

And in the summers it was the Clementes.

Tony Dungy lived on that street.

Yeah.

And again Scott Township, the place to be.

Yeah, but it's not in any way affluent.

It was just workin class of Penn Hills like that.

That where Willie Stargell.

Oh.

Oh.

Little lounge.

Yeah.

No, it's.

He could.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

And that's that's a big key of it too.

You know, I'm not going to say that growing up in the 70s and the South Hills didn't have its own level of prejudice.

But at that same time you know, when you're a Steeler or the family of a Pirate, people, especially in a middle class neighborhood, sometimes become more welcoming.

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, I have to admit, I was pretty excited when I was looking up.

I want to say, first of all, you know, I've interviewed you a few times, obviously for people who don't know, but it's always been pretty buttoned down pretty official sort of things.

Right?

So I did a little bit of research on you before I knew we were going to do this interview, and I was very excited to find out that you had dropped out of college because I did the same.

I wasnt excited.

And then you blew it for me.

Yeah, Im sure.

Right.

But then you blew it for m because I saw that you went back and you actually got a master's, right?

So.

So that' the only regret I have in life is that I didn't do that before my dad passed, because it meant more to him than it did to me.

Yeah, but, you know I went through two universities, 5 or 6 majors.

I can't even remember how many.

I lef Penn State with over 153 credits and 124 needed for a diploma but I had three courses to take.

And that summer I took one.

And then I like to joke tha I graduated in just six terms.

Reagan.

Bush.

Clinton.

Clinton.

Bush.

Yeah.

Bush.

Yeah.

But it was the last two courses was a freshman level history course.

Sure.

Right.

By then you were old enough.

You kind of been in history.

But then I had to take a 40 level political science course.

But Penn State didnt offer, any 400 level online.

Yeah.

And so it's like, what am I going to d if I'm going to get this degree?

And they allowed me to tak a first year law school class.

Okay.

So through Penn State's campus in Harrisburg, I took a first year lega writing course for law school.

And aced it.

So it's got this.

Got my diploma in the mail.

Yeah.

Put it back in its envelope.

Took it home to my mom and said, you deserve this more than I did.

Yeah.

And then a buddy of mine David Miller from the University of Pittsburgh, who worked for the Murphy administration as the budget director.

We became friends over th city's looming financial crisis.

He said, he took me to lunch, and he said, so I want you to come to GSPIA me and earn your masters no that you have your bachelor's.

Absolutely not.

I'm never going into a classroom again.

And he convinced me of one thing.

He said, take my course one course, and if you like it, stay in the school.

And if you don't?

Then that's it.

And yeah, I earned my master's degree shortly after getting that piece of paper.

What motivated you to get into politics?

To really stay this hyper focused on on the city and on just trying to figure out th best way to serve the community.

So a couple of things.

Number one, dark secret.

I'm a baby boomer like Pat because I was born in 1964.

Right?

Right on the cusp.

Right.

46 to 64.

But all of my friends and everything that I grew up with is X. Yeah.

And all these young people, I don't know how, like, I don't know, like I'm the man without a generation.

Yeah, yeah.

I always said that out of generation, like anybody born in the 60s, they were a little bit too young to be the same age as Seinfeld and a little bit too old to b the same age as Friends.

Right.

You know, I do know we.

And we didn't have the Beatles or whatever we had, like REM.

Right.

It cuts it off at MTV.

Did you grow up with MTV then?

Like.

No.

Like we're the old ones.

Yeah, so I did.

And not only that, but Robby Sivitini said that who lived in South Fayette got MTV two years before we did.

So we would drive out to South Fayette before when it was all farmland, to be able to watch our MTV.

Yeah, yeah.

So it was a big thing back then.

The thing about Pittsburgh, I think it's part family having my grandfather raised me in the house who came from Italy.

He was born in 1893, fought in World War One for Italy.

Wow.

Yeah.

And had a second grade education.

Worked 38 year at Columbia Steel in Carnegie.

Just this, really.

And my other grandfather died at J&L on the Southside at the age of 50.

And so I felt like, you know, it was in my blood, right?

I had this and I really felt connected to the city, and I had my family as well.

And then there was this watching the city die, all those great things tha I told you about in the 70s.

79.

I'm starting high school at Chartiers Valley and by the time I leave in 83, the city of Pittsburgh is in a death knell, right?

And it only got worse in the 80s.

And I remember telling people when I was at Penn State, I'm going back to Pittsburgh, and nobody was going back to Pittsburgh.

Everybody who was fro Pittsburgh was picking what city they were going to go to, and there were no jobs.

And when Pat came in 1993, East Liberty was the murder capital of Pittsburgh.

More murders in that one neighborhood.

In fact, I remember Valerie McDonald Roberts, when she was on council, made the TV station stop announcing when they would do the homicide investigations from East Liberty because the Detective Bureau was there They couldn't say East Liberty.

I remember that.

And Lawrenceville was a shooting den for heroin, prostitution.

The prostitutes would be o Butler Street in the mornings.

The lines to get in the bars and started around 8, 9 a.m.

and Dresden Way was where dealing heroin was occurring throughout all of western Pennsylvania, and people were being shot and killed there in a regular basis.

And you talk to people today and they're like, oh, it's gentrified.

It's horrible.

Talk to the people who live in the 90s, right.

Talk to the people who lived there at the beginning of the 2000.

It wasn't a place that you wanted to live.

It is a place that you ended up.

Right.

And people who work their entire life working in mills and have their homes in East Liberty or Lawrenceville couldn't sell them.

And if they did, maybe get $40,000, right.

I started Carnegie Mellon in 83 on a full ride Army ROTC scholarship.

I taught repelling off of the the old Skibo Hall.

I was a Ranger cadet that earned my black beret, and I ended up at Penn State traveling around with the Grateful Dead.

That was my 80s, right?

Wow.

So my 90s was sort of the redemptio time to be able to try and draw.

Yeah, like, what the hell happened?

You know, my poor parents.

You know, it's like.

So it really was like that time period in that, that understanding that you couldn't just graduate from college and get a job in Pittsburgh.

You had to know somebody.

You had to have something.

It had to be so specialized.

And even at that point, you were going to get paid much more if you left.

And so I just wanted to try and make something happen.

And in that process, during that decade, I met a bunch of people who felt the same way, and they saw not what Pittsburgh was at that moment, but what potential it had, which was off the charts.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, it's so interesting you say that because I started at Point Park College in 1990, and at the time I always say there was like one thing, one plac for for college students to go.

And that was the rocks that was on well, on the Boulevard of the Allies.

Right.

There was nothing.

Right.

But but the city was filled with potential, and people were doing things like taking old warehouses and having pop up art shows there or, you know, concerts, right, in old warehouses in Lawrenceville.

So and that's what Pat and his partner were doing.

Yeah.

And so that's why I was ver interested when the mayor talked about bringing you in, because it's just so interesting.

Underutilized existing structure.

When I, when I came here visiting with my wife from DC a friend was going to get a graduate degree at University of Pittsburgh for Hall studies PhD actually smart guy driving through town and like, we're going past these dead brass manufacturing buildings and I'm like, do they have lofts in this city?

And he he turned to me and said, Pat they don't know what lofts are.

It kind of blew my mind.

But the thing that was the best, that was a that was a subsequent visit.

The first time we came through was actually through Lawrenceville.

Now Larry Wood, Butler Avenue.

There was a golf pro shop ther where you could get like fancy clubs and crap like that.

And other than that, it was just [bleep] Butler Street and it was just awesome.

We drove through there and it was like one of the first times he came through Pittsburgh and just love coming up there to actually visit a pal but that made an impression.

We we came here to visit him three times, and on the way back in the truck, one of us turned to the other and said, we should just probably move here from DC.

And then we did, because like, it was undervalued existing infrastructure.

Yeah, and he couldn't affor the freaking vacant lot in DC.

Although if we had, you know, wed be golden now, right?

Yeah.

It wa it was economics and thrifting.

Pittsburgh, if I can get classist.

Had the richest middle class in the world in this country.

And they started dyin and we visited to see our friend and we went to Sawmill Run Boulevard.

And the [bleep] thrifting in this town was off the charts.

The [bleep] that we would find that is now accumulated, hopefully slowly divested in our home was insane.

Because yeah, there was great stuff in Pittsburgh and literally we moved here for chea housing, thrifting, and the fact that like, people were shocked when they found out we were moving for n particular reason, it was great.

We actually got adverse reaction.

Well, you're moving to Pittsburgh or either.

Why?

It was either slack jawed wonderment or why?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there's a there' a line in a Joe Grushecky song, East Carson Street, where he talks about the thrifting, but he doesn't talk about his like, wow, it's more like the treasures of our family.

Yeah.

Than the thrift shops.

Yeah.

Well, you know, Pittsburgh ha always punched above its weight.

Its weight.

Probably because of the railroad barons.

Right.

But, I mean, the theater even throughout the 80s and 90s, when the city was falling apart, like you said.

Right.

It still had amazing theater.

It still had sports teams to, you know, to beat anybody.

It had just an amazing cultural scene that it unless you lived here, you had no idea.

And that's, I think with so many who have recently moved here or so much younger, like they can't imagin the red light district, right?

Yeah.

Working for the lieutenant governor in 92.

And it was still that way.

Yeah.

And prostitution, like it was just rampant in downtown Pittsburgh.

We almost didn't move here because no, downtown is great.

There was like no vacancies.

It was like a real downtown, like, complete with, like, you know, that part.

Well, not Liberty.

I mean, that was a tough time, but like, every like when we moved here literally was like we moved into a city I hadn't been in for 20 years because downtown, they had a freaking G.C.

Murphy's.

Yeah.

Right.

And.

It had a pet department.

That's right.

And a butcher shop It was freaking insane.

I used to buy my fish at Kaufmanns.

Yes.

Right.

And I'm not talking about eating, I mean, I aquarium.

That's right.

They'd have the sale.

You know, ten cent neon tetra, right?

Just load up my bag like fish.

These jagoff that wanted to do Fifth, Forbes.

We walked up the street with them two years before they were going to do this thing.

We walked past Candyrama and I turned to the guy.

Who was the, like, you know, I don't know if you know CEOs, but they have this expression that they use tha like I'm not capable of doing.

Most people can, but it's like, is it a smile or am I going to die now?

But they like are really good at that [bleep].

Yeah.

And I turned to this guy and said, you're going to lose this space.

And he's like, yeah, that's like 500ft.

Like that's all.

No, this, this whole area were tearing down.

I'm like, that's Candyrama.

So I haven't been here this long, but I know, don't [bleep] with Candyrama.

Yeah.

Not downtown.

And they did.

Didn't work.

Yeah.

No, I mean, 1990s downtow was the same as 1970s downtown.

Yeah.

I mean, it was basically the sam businesses with less jewelers.

Right, right.

That's the only one industry that's sort of.

Yeah.

Didn't hang around as much.

But the thing about the culture, yes, it had all those amenities.

But at that same time, that's when the Heinz Endowments started the cultural distric and the Cultural Trust was born.

And, you know it was like when you saw Detroit going through bankruptcy the first thing people said is, you know, sell the artwork.

You know, it was like, right.

You remember that?

Yeah.

And they didn't.

Right.

They're like, know all this?

Like Ford Foundation, Kresge, all those guys stepped up, right?

Like, no.

And that's exactly what happened in Pittsburgh.

So during all that and The Children's Museum had recently been built, The Carnegie Science Center, The Warhol, the August Wilson Center and the Cultural Trust, it was a whole different movement.

It was like, okay, things are really bad.

We're going to double down on culture, arts and education, right?

Nobody did that.

Right.

And at the same time, we didn't lose the symphony, right?

We didn't lose the ballet.

You know, we didn't lose the past treasures from the Gilded Age.

And we added to it thinking, well if the city ever does come back, it's going to be really special They maintain the real estate.

This is important.

Yeah, well, see, that's how I met.

So Pat was the guy who was the troublemaker, who was saying Mayor Murphy's idea for Fifth and Forbes was going in the wrong direction.

You know, it was sort of taken out of the Urban Land Institutes 1980 playbook.

And this is how Indianapolis came back.

And, you know, all these other cities.

But the one thin that he mentioned is, you know, Pittsburgh never was a part of that economic spur that people in the 80s and 90s saw.

So we never became anywhere, USA.

There was no Beltway.

There's no beltway.

But there is also no Panera Bread on every corner next to a Starbucks.

Right You still have that neighborhood bakery that represented th ethnicity of that neighborhood.

That's right.

A hundred years ago.

That's right.

And the coffee shop was independently owned.

That's right.

And we sort of missed that death angel.

Right?

Right.

And.

Right.

Well, you know, it's really.

But that would have been a lot different if it wasn't this grassroot movement that occurred in the 90s.

Right?

People got pissed off and then used.

But it wasn't built in the 70s or the 80s.

It was created from the ground level in the 90s.

Yeah.

And it was it was interestin because and actually, props to Christine Brill, John Klein as well.

But Christine did a graduate like thin on like how Ground Zero started.

And we actually Arizona State University like also did an independent thing.

But one of the weir things about it was it was like, you and I have talked about this, the base.

What does that mean in Arabic?

It just means, you know, it's al Qaeda is the base.

It's just all a distributed group of folks doing [bleep].

And weirdly enough, not only were we that when we started this u like we thought Murphy's thing, but we each did like weird little projects like Tracy Jackson did Flux, which I was thinking about that coming in here like that, lik there was not a word for pop up.

Yeah, yeah, there was Flux before that, and it was just going into these dead white elephant buildings, again, underutilized, existing like assets, undervalued asset that were just white elephants.

Yeah.

The neighborhoods that people had heard of i but never went to.

Right.

Right.

And then all of a sudden, there's 12 bands, 40 artists and everything on one night.

And this entire thing.

That was my introduction to Allentown, right?

Yeah, yeah.

There.

Yeah, right.

The hostel.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's right, the hostel.

That's right.

And the Brewhouse on the south side.

Right.

And even the Beehive, I mean, I, you know, when you talk about the South Side itself, here's a neighborhood where, like you said, it was, it was families that had been there since time immemorial.

Right.

And the steel industry collapses.

And then what are you going to do?

And all of a sudden, independent owners come in, they set up a coffee shop, they set up a Slacker, and all of a sudden you're getting all the arts kids who, you know, we're going to Art Institute and we're intereste in the Brewhouse space.

Right.

And now you have development going up and down East Carson Street, and all of a sudden, the city is taking care of itself in ways that Murphy couldn't just reminded m of one of my favorite activities in this goes late 80s, early 90s was at the Liberty Bel before it became the Lava Lounge But Friday nights don't even.

But in the early days whe the old timers from South Side so freaking would be doing like he'd be doing like polkas, right?

And they would be dancing.

And then the college kids would start coming in and the lights would start getting darker.

And then you're putting on that sweaty horse head, right?

And it's sweat from the previous person.

It was kind of like what did it for us when we like when we moved here?

Well we said, that brings me, though, to the point that you were sort of the first post-industrial mayor, at least in my estimation.

You were leading a city that was no longer mired with the steel mills, right?

No one was expecting the plants to reopen anymore.

All of a sudden And you had a whole new agenda that people were able to embrace, you know, things like bike lanes, things like turning the brown spaces into something else.

Right?

I mean, how what did that feel like?

What was what was the experience?

I think, you know, I remember when we lost Bob O'Connor and there was this a lot of optimism around Luke Ravenstahl because of his, his youth, his age, and so many people really believed that that would help to transcend Pittsburgh from being this old town.

And people would view us differently because our mayor was young.

Right.

And it's not a knock, but Luke was the youngest member of the old guard.

Yeah.

His family had been steeped in government and politics and leaders in the North Side and connected with Forrester and all the going back, like.

And he just happened to b the next generation of it.

We.

What TV show was he on?

He was on that TV show.

He was America's youngest mayor.

And he was only David Letterman or something.

Oh, you are correct.

Yeah.

That's right.

Yes.

I was trying to remember that.

I watched that, yeah.

It's kind of interesting because Sophie, I think was on one of them as well for being one of the oldest.

And she was the first person we I saw when I moved here, it was awesome.

But you have to explain that.

So we moved here, had no idea the Pittsburgh Marathon, let alone the next day after we moved here.

And I had to get the U-Haul trucks back or we paid another I don't know how much and drove my brother like at four in the morning or whatever it was down to the train station.

So hed get back to D.C.

after driving up with me, and then the next morning we had no coffee and we had everything was boxes which really needed that coffee.

So thank God there wasn't just a guy or a store who had a coffee.

There was a store named Mr.

Coffee.

Yeah, we wen there, ended up getting a side, but that's another story.

And I'm walking down the street not realizing tha there was a Pittsburgh Marathon.

That is going to prevent me.

But like a lot of lot of a lot of service, I couldn't get the truck back because of this freaking marathon.

And I was like, just finding out I'm walking down the street and don't yet have coffee.

I'm at Don Allen Chevrolet where it used to be.

Yeah, Libert Bomb and South Atlantic Avenue.

And I look up and a convertible goes past that' sitting in the back on her butt.

Like you're supposed to if you're like the mayor or what ever, is like Sophie Masloff waving and literally was the first person.

That's what she used to do with every person who decided to move to Pittsburgh So awesome, first person I saw moving to Pittsburgh.

She was very excited.

That and the free beer up on the next year on there, the Bloomfield Bridge.

That was just awesome.

So going back the if you the way I look at it is like 1946, that's when things start changing in Pittsburgh and David Lawrence and Mellon and the Allegheny Conference and the URA an all of these different things.

And I got to see in the 70s, Point State Park gets built and the completion of these different types of dreams.

And they build Three Rivers Stadium.

They build a new convention center and they build a new airport.

Then they tear all those down to build a new basebal stadiums, new convention center.

And now we have new airport.

But all of that, I sort of put in one big capsule, and I do vie what our administration started.

And what we ended with is th beginning of the next chapter.

Right.

So it isn't a city that is built on manufacturing.

There's economy and its neighborhoods are homogeneous to one ethnicity, and where there really aren't bridges for others to be.

I think that we started to see that emerging is what will be the next Pittsburgh.

And that's why we call the administration the Next Pittsburgh, which actually was taken at the same time by is it Tracy for her publication Next Pittsburgh.

So we both had like Next Pittsburgh handles on Twitter and we just co-existed.

But the thing about it, it was more I mean, I like using the example of bike lanes because the bike lane weren't really about bike lanes.

But if you are going to make big change, it requires a cultural shift.

And the bike lanes represented a cultural shift.

And I think that's why som people were so opposed to them, because they recognize that that was a cultural shift in a tip of the hat to a younger generation that didn't necessarily want to have to have a car and wanted to be able to utilize public assets the same ways that thos who did have a car utilize them.

And there were a number of different things that occurred over those eight years that were a tip to what was going to be and what is now what Pittsburgh is.

But I like to view it back, going back to the 90s in the general or the decade before I took office, has been the mayor's office, the work that I had been doin for 20 years in the City Hall, seven years as a chief of staff 12 years as a member of council in a district that represented Carlow University, Chatham University, Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Pittsburgh Presbyterian Hospital, Montefiore Hospital Children's Hospital, Shady Side Hospital, Hillman Cancer Center, and West Penn.

And over that course of, 2001 to 2011, where I was in city council that district grew by 10%.

Yeah.

And the idea was if we could do in replicate while every other counci district lost population.

Yeah.

If we could replicate that on a citywide basis in order to be abl to see this new economic engine and the opportunity for people to not only stay, which all of my brothers and almos all of my friends had to leave.

They didn't want to, but they had to.

Then we coul actually make Pittsburgh a place that would not only be a place where my friends children could stay, but where their friends who lived in different places in the country would come to.

Yeah.

And we saw that.

And we saw in that decade over 30% increase in our Hispanic community, over 30% increase in our Asian community.

And we saw the blending of the places in East Liberty that white kids from Shady Side wouldn't go to being a mixed community over everybody if a certain age could be, and even some old people would be, and where that would blend back into Walnut Street and kids from every neighborhood where the bars that I used to hang out with where everyone kind of looked like me, now look like the United Nations, right?

And there's at least three languages being spoken.

Yeah, yeah.

But when we moved here, like we had a choice of like basically three foods it was Italian, it was German and it was Polish.

Right?

Then when, I mean, we moved here from our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.

we ate so much Ethiopian food, which is still so awesom and still underrepresented here.

But like when, like the first Vietnamese restaurant opened on Penn Avenue, it was Sure.

so awesome.

It was like a sign.

Yeah, one of the one of actually one of the, we've worked on a couple of things, but professionally, which I guess technically you weren't my boss, bu you were like the lead client.

We did the Welcoming Pittsburgh plan, which was not only like one of the points of prid tough project, but like probably one of the most amazing groups of people like I never met.

And in 2015, on the way out of the white House, the Obama administration's, you know, welcoming nationa initiatives gave shouts to you.

Yeah.

Wow.

No.

Yeah.

And Betty Cruz and, you know, she was really the principal that was working on that.

We never had a person that worked on our immigrant refugee community in the mayor's office.

And Betty, somebody who now heads up the World Affairs Council, took it upon herself to work in to meet with all of these groups.

So we would have, you know, for the Bhutanese community growing in Carrick, a movie night where the film would be in their own language so grandma could sit and watch, the film as well.

Right?

You know, and just simple little things to large things, but to take away from where Pittsburgh may have had a bad reputation in the past to being very proactive.

And why was that really important on this one?

Because my grandfather was treated like crap when he came over.

He was told to go bac and go back where you came from.

And in 1923, he had only been in the country for two years, The Ku Klux Klan marched to Carnegie and 10,000 Klansmen burnt a 70ft cross in Carnegie Park right down the hill from where I grew up.

And as they marched, they marched across the Glendale Bridge because they had another 70ft cross that they wanted to burn in front of the Irish Catholic Church.

And classic, my grandfather and the other folks got on the bridge.

They put a truck across it and they fought the Klan.

And from the church tower, somebody shot and killed one of the Klan leaders in.

He was from Washington County, and the Klan turned around.

That's the history that I never want to see repeated.

Right.

And that opportunity to be the mayor, to work on the Welcoming Pittsburgh campaign and to be able not just Pat, but so many great folks from around the city, we created a model for other cities to follow.

And it's not Sanctuary City because we don' control the jail, so we can't.

But it sure is a great neighborhood that would make Mr.

Rogers proud.

Yeah, yeah, I was going to ask you.

You ran for mayor several times.

And why do you keep why did you keep coming back?

And I think you answered, I think that's like, yeah, I think yeah.

No, it's the only job that I really ever wanted.

And I mean, I never wanted to run for public office to run for higher public office.

And I always said to people when I was a council member, the only other offic that I'd ever run for is mayor.

And I jokingly said that after 19 years of watching somebody play the video game, you want to play it.

Yeah.

So you want to be able to have your initiatives.

I said before how I met Pat during the Ground Zero and Ground Zero brought together amazing creative people.

There were artists, there were architects there were urban planners there.

Richard Florida, who is part of it?

Doctor Doctor, Florida, Don Carter, I mean, just in the age, went anywhere from 20 to 70.

And but it was really people who were civic minded.

And it in itself led to a really strong push in good civic engagement at the neighborhood level and a political movement as well.

And it took off on two tracks.

And Pat staye focused on that civic side, but also went and got involved i voter engagement, not political, but getting more people engaged in local elections and other things.

And I took off on the politica side, and there's a whole group of people who are now in positions of power around the city that are the branches of what this started off.

And we we worked together 2002 on an initiative called the Guyasuta Fellowship.

Yeah.

And we trained.

Several years.

How many hundreds?

Yeah, probably was like over 200 folks.

Initially small.

I crossed paths with Werner Macklin the other day.

But just a group of folks that Bill knew or who he found out about the were interested in like doing something.

And I guess that was the thing that ran through both that project.

But all the other stuff we did as the Ground zero, which was you can't show up at meetings, you got to do some [bleep], like, what are you going to do?

Like pick something to do?

And we all ha from the most part, we all had something that we did.

And like Flux went and took like free beer bands and friends and artists into a dead building.

And like we did stuff around like transit ability, as they say now.

But you had to do stuff, the ultraviolet loop.

Yeah.

And I thin that was the whole point of it.

It was essentially a lot of people wanted to do something and like, we did this and 2024 and then did some stuff with you too.

But it was a young voter stuff.

And like that year, we like focused on asking young voters to vot and to do it based on like what the research said, which is i you want young people to vote, ask them.

And don't you or m ask them, their friends, peers and neighbors ask them.

And that change like the whole approach for me, because I'd been i I'd volunteered where they just parachuted me into the Hill district and men literally would see me coming and say, hey, what year is this?

Because you're all here again, right?

It was so [bleep] worthless.

But yeah, if you like, teach folks how to do it and do i that year that we did the work in 2024 before you like ran the first time like in the places the the voting districts.

2004.

Yeah.

That's exactly like we increased young voter participation there.

Like I think 25%.

And like it was just nobody was doing this.

I mean, he was nobody would even tal about an issue for young people.

It was simply every Democrat Republican, it didn't matter.

65 and over there, the only ones that vote and those are the only issues that matter.

We tried that didn't work.

So this became a whole new approach that has had the ripple effects of where we are today.

And it wasn't only that.

I mean, one of my favorite events was the the VFW downtown for the punk night and bingo.

Yeah, the bingo hall, there was a there was a like one of those bingo halls with the the secretaries all went.

Do you guys know where this is?

Do you know what it was?

Very.

Yeah.

It's on Forbes Avenue across from the second floor.

Cigarettes, and bingo.

Did I tell you bingo Bens economic development theory?

So this is the guy who ran this, like bingo hall.

He had it.

He had a nonprofit, right?

Like certain other nonprofit.

And he made a go of it.

And he took Kelly in the middle of this whole Fifth Forbes controversy.

And I would show up there we would do big rock shows up.

Zappo, Mike Devine did.

Like well, he did, but I'm talking about punk night when there was punk dance, all of that stuff right up in the bingo hall.

It was almost like San Francisco was like crazy.

But bingo Ben took me outside one day and he said, Patrick I tell you what, you take this to the mayor.

Because I know you'r in with all those guys, Murphy, which I wasn't in with all those guys at all.

He said take this to him.

[Bleep].

What they need to do gambling on this side.

Already got the operation started.

Prostitution.

The other side solves everything.

And I'm like, this is probably the most classic version of urban development and economic planning that America knows.

Frankly, it's.

No.

He didn't get though.

It wasn't that that one event, the pun night bingo night at that place.

It was that I mean, there was the rave that was sanctioned in that tunnel, the Wabash tunnel, right?

Yeah.

Totally forgot about that.

Do you remember when those kids when we had, like, the giant snowstorm the last time they went down Mt.

Washington?

Yeah.

That was insane.

Yeah I totally forgot about.

Right?

Yeah, yeah.

No, but there was just this attitude that the people who remained here in the 90s, it was lik we were living in this abandoned mansion, and we just would do things and got away with it.

Right.

We didnt really ask permission You can go into the empty mills.

Like it just blew my mind.

And like when, when I started doing work in places like Morningside.

Just freaking jewel.

Like like 2008.

Like, I'd get, like a few people like Grant, Irving and Amy who were like, yeah, this is great.

We moved here and everybody's like, love.

And it's all wonderful.

And other folks would just like, all they would talk about when I like, interviewed them was, well, you know, we used to have this.

Right.

And when they used to have this, that was on the second floor, it was like they walking in ghost world.

I'd say.

Right.

But it's interesting you talk about the the steel mills because I interviewed for the book from the Beehive book that I did, an artist named Tim Cullen.

Yeah, right.

Well, the thing I was going to say the three that maybe three signs of like when I moved here.

Yeah.

Four now, Tim Cullen lik when we drove across the bridge that first time and I saw that [bleep] thing up there, I'm like, oh, right, right.

Got to know Tim very well we canoed actually.

But he said, I used to go into the steel mills and just, you know, as they were, deconstructing the and take hunks of metal to use.

And no one would stop m because no one had thought about that you shouldn't let people go into a steel mill and just take pieces of metal from it, right?

That's very symbolic of the 90s in my memory, right?

Yeah, right.

It's right.

It was.

It was this old abandoned mansion.

That's what Pittsburgh was.

And to those that wanted to stay and fight, you could see, well, if we sanded this wood down and then restained i and it would be beautiful again.

And I think that that's the that track that we took and you can't have lived it and view things today in a non pragmatic manor and a lot of what politics has become on both sides is more about the emotional part of it than the pragmatic part.

And to be on a personal level, that's wh I feel separated from politics.

Yeah, I just I tend to view this city in a more tangible way, with a much more positive attitud than where people from the far left or the far right, righ have that opinion of Pittsburgh.

Yeah.

And I can't be changed because what I saw.

Right.

And how hard it was to get to the point where we're at and how much people like Pat and others played the part from the grassroots level up and how far we've actually have been able to come.

The legacy that you left behin isn't simply these initiatives with the city, right?

It's the people you fostered, a group of people who are now involved in politics and not for profits and civic engagement.

And what's that like?

I mean, how is that?

You ever see Camelot?

Yeah.

You ever see the last scene?

Yeah.

Of course.

It's exactly like where he' telling him about what once was.

And it's to a young person.

And to be honest with you, some of it was by design.

I hired young people in orde to have them mentored by people who I went up the ladder with, in order to be able to assure that there would be another generation that would be traine in much of the same way I was.

So before I ever ran for City Council, I spent seven years as chief of staff as an apprentice, learning it.

And then I hired Dan Gilman to be my chief of staff, and he hired Erica Strasberger to be his.

There's a lineage that goes so much further than that.

It's if you look at Mayor OConnors administration, the top level positions in the authorities in the city are former administrators from our administration.

If you look at county executive Innamoratos administration, the top folks, including the county manager and the deputy county manager and the chief of staff, all came from the fifth floor from our administration.

If you look at the foundation community, the universities, the hospitals, the corporate, you're going to find people spread throughout the city who are much younger than me.

Yeah.

And what I'm very confident of, they're not leaving.

And for the next 20 to 30 years, there will be that effect of that team leaning on each other and helping each other as they go up the ladder.

Yeah.

That's great.

Thanks.

So why don't we take a break and we'll come back and get to some of these fun, yeah?

We'll be right back.

What is the Gen X Pittsburgh podcast?

Let me take you back.

Remember when coffee was king and Pizza bagels ruled on the corner of 14th and Carson at The Beehive?

Or how about that tim you stumbled upon art all night?

How cool was that?

Or when your evening started, instead of at 10 p.m.?

Yeah, we miss those days, too.

So we're bringing them back.

One Gen-X story at a time.

Joining David Rullo and I, Valerie Christofel, as we sit down with the movers and shakers, the artists and the voices who helped shape Pittsburgh back in the early 90s.

Subscrib to the Gen-X Pittsburgh podcast.

All right.

Welcome back to Gen X Pittsburgh.

We are joined tonight with mayor Bill Peduto and his friend Pat Clark.

And we have a question for you.

It's about wrestling.

No, no.

Okay.

We'll do wrestling first.

Sure.

Sure.

So I know that you are a big supporter of.

Or at least you wer when it was around the Keystone Keystone State Wrestling Alliance, right?

That was.

And so I was curious.

Is it all professional wrestling that you like or was it specific to Pittsburgh's?

Well, KSWA was amazing and it was really incredible when it was at the Moose in Lawrenceville, which is now Spirit.

I mean, it was shockingly Pittsburgh, where there were kids that may have been 16, 14 smoking cigarettes.

Yeah, there's but the wrestlers themselves are just awesome guys.

A lot of them from Morningside, from Polish Hill, from Bloomfield, from Lawrenceville.

And there was Jell-O shots.

And just everything about it was incredible.

And then you'd go down to the bar downstairs and there'd be an Elvis impersonator performing, like, karaoke.

And it was just the perfect quintessential night.

That's far too.

That's.

But that is performance art.

Yeah, that is incredible.

Incredible performance art.

And they they took it very seriously.

And they did such a great job with it that, you know, I, I was there as a supporter and a fan.

And then when I became mayor that merged into becoming a heel.

Sure.

So I would get up on to the squared circle and start yelling at people and keep moving.

Yeah.

You know, you're going to get more bike lanes.

Do you get any more bike lanes And people were throwing stuff.

And I'm like, I'll raise your taxes.

So I did not know there was like this wrestling scene.

Oh.

Did you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Tom's the one who elevated my the mutual friend of ours.

Who we lost Ron Russitano, who was a commissioner for boxin and other things for the state.

And personal friends with Dominic Denucci and Bruno Sammartino when we were in second grade.

Ronnie and I were the Italian battalion.

Yeah.

And so.

And during those days, my like I said, I grew u with my grandfather in the home and, you know, he was five foot seven, 155 pounds.

But Saturday afternoons watching Bruno Sammartino wrestling, he, you know, that's that's the strongest man in the world, right?

He's a number one.

Bruno.

Right.

And I'd sit there with him and we'd watch.

And I remember taking him and my buddy and my grandfather's friend, Mr.

Musamelli, to Civic Arena to see Larry Zbyszko.

Larry, how do you feel about Larry Zbyszko?

Well, he became a hit.

I know that, right.

How do you feel about it?

Well, I mean, he broke Brunos heart.

Yes.

He did.

It was just incredible memories of childhood.

All my friends were into it It was superstar Billy Graham.

Snuka, Jimmy Snuka.

Right.

I mean, it was that era in the coming off of the Pittsburgh era WWF.

What was what was the local promotion called here?

Because it was Big Time Professional Wrestling in Michigan?

Yeah, I can't remember what it was on channel 11.

Right.

So chilly Billy.

Yeah, it was, but.

And there was Hatpin Mary I don't know if you know that, but that's where she developed here.

Pittsburgh.

She used to.

This is in the 60s.

She had a hatpin that when wrestler she didn't like would come by.

She would stick them.

And originally she was just a fan.

Is that Ringside Rosie?

No, this was Hatpin Mary.

Yeah.

And it became such a thing tha they made her part of the show.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, right side Rosie was too okay with Bill Cardell.

Yeah.

You know, I don't know i you guys remember Mitch Cates.

He ran for city council against Leonard Bodak.

Okay.

But he wrestled He was a giant of a man.

Yeah.

He was trained by Killer Kowalski up in New England.

Yeah.

And outside of Boston.

So when he ran for city council, I supported him.

And we had pasta and pierogi fundraiser at Iron City Brewery with Killer Kowalski and Bruno Sammartino.

Oh, wow.

Man.

Yeah.

Wow.

That's amazing.

It brought tears to his eyes.

You could see it.

Well, yeah.

They hadn't seen each other for a long time.

Yeah, just.

Just like Sidney Crosby the other day.

I have a picture with Killer Kowalski choking me.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Bruno and Mitch standing there.

My longtime, like, God bless him, friend, he's now administrative judge.

That working for that jagoff Kennedy in D.C.. But wonderful guy.

Long time professional wrestling fan.

We've got so many matches, it's insane.

But he one of the greatest two, two of the greatest events in his professional wrestling following career were that banquet when he came up from D.C.

to attend that it blew his mind.

Yeah.

And we went to see ECW out in Rostraver.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They had a bar until the roof collapsed.

They had a bar where you go to a wrestling match, sit at the bar and watch the action, and if you didn't leave, the wrestlers other than the ham and eggers would come up and drink with.

Yeah.

It was one of the most moving experiences of my life.

Can we just ask you, what was i like being on Undercover Boss?

Were you ready to hear what you're like, the employees were really going to say to you?

So reality TV is not reality.

Yeah.

Start with that So I got the random phone call.

They called my communications office and they said, you know, would you like to be on the show?

And what they didn't say is there was a three part interview series where they they had found stuff that was on YouTube that they liked with about a dozen mayors.

So they started with that, and they did interviews by the internet.

And then the final interviews were in person.

And so I went through that proces and I was selected to be on it.

And what they do is they ship you out.

So I was out at the Double Tree off the Parkway West like Greentree, right?

And I wasn't allowed.

I was with my girlfriend at the time.

I wasn't allowed to see her.

I wasn't allowed to see my family, I wasn't.

They didn't want me talking to my family.

Wow.

Or her, they they wanted everything.

And basically, I would get up at five in the morning and they would do that beard thing and the rest for two hours, and then they would put whatever I was going to wear that day and ship me off.

And you fil and then you sit there and you wait for an hour and a half, then you film and you said, and I said, hey, guys, I still have a job so I have to be back by five.

And they never got me back by five.

It was like 6:30 or whatever.

So I worked for like three more hours at the hotel and then go to sleep for six hours, get up for like two weeks.

It was two weeks.

Yeah, it was over a week.

It was like a I can't recall how long, but what was the press?

What was the story to the general public where was I?

Yeah.

Where were you?

I can't remember I think that we had done it.

So there were certain times o certain days where I was public.

And so it never really became a thing.

I guess it was two weekends plus plus five, five days.

Yeah.

It's really like the whole showbiz thing did a really some people, it ropes them right in, you know.

Oh god, the entire episode.

At one tim the producer came to me and he said, and I won't use her name but why is my director crying?

And I just explained that Californians are passive aggressive and Pittsburghers are passive and aggressive.

And I really didn't appreciate, like, what she was asking me, because what they'll do is theyll coach you.

Right.

You know, it's like so when they said that and it said that, you know, they weren't able to get the money they had gotten before.

Didn't that make you feel howd it make you feel?

And then film you.

Right.

And I'd be like, I'm fine with it.

They were stealing money before, and now they're not stealing money.

Okay, well, let me ask you.

Take that part out.

Now, if you're a human and you have this person telling you that they don't have money, they used to hav and they have children, right?

How does how do you respond I just told you how I respond.

They were stealing, you know, so they they everything is and they want to coax all the answers.

And the other thing they did is they sabotage.

So, you know when I was cutting down trees, the chainsaw was bent so that it would not be able.

So and so the other guy gets his chainsaw and cuts right through it and I'm like going crazy.

And there was some other things that they sabotaged.

But you'll notice when you see it, like the CEO will drive the forklift into a wall.

Yes.

And it's always like to make you the foil.

Right.

And so between the man that you're the man.

No, I mean, you have to be the man.

That one thing we did do i we worked with Visit Pittsburgh, and we made it mandator that any of the background shots we were in charge of, and we use beauty shots of Pittsburgh.

So if you ever notice, it's the beautiful skyline and there's like a swan on the river.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's that's everything.

We put the swan back in the cage, you know.

So it's.

But no, we used it so that everything for b-roll was beautiful shots of Pittsburgh.

Right.

Okay.

So we do something at the end of the show where we ask our guests the same ten questions and they're kind of rapid fire.

Val, do you want to start, did you want me to start?

I'll start.

And you both can answer.

Okay.

All right.

Iron City or Rolling Rock?

Iron City.

Iron City.

Three Rivers or Heinz Field?

Three Rivers.

Three Rivers.

Favorite alternative bands?

The Breeders.

Oh, nice.

We haven't had that one before.

I have, Why cant I think of her name?

Yeah.

No, Kelly.

I got Kelly's phone number.

Well, good for you.

Replacements.

That's mine.

Okay.

So.

They [bleep] everything.

Yeah.

Turner's or Schneider's?

Turner's.

Turners.

Okay.

Favorite 90s movie?

Or Gen X?

You can, you can stretch it out to the 80s if you want.

So probably going more boomer in my brain right now.

And I'm going Deer Hunter.

I'm going to go with God bless her, Catherine O'Hara John Candy I'm going with Home Alone.

I don't like the movie, but that scene and the reason it really comes to mind is because I was listening to Saturday Polka on the ham radio last weekend.

God damne if they didn't play that clip, with John Candy.

Right.

It was awesome.

Yes.

That Donzis and Chaunceys or Metropol and Rosebud?

I'm more Metropol.

Metropol, Rosebud.

Yeah, yeah, but many more happy memories.

I think we can all agree on that.

Down a strip.

Yeah.

Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?

Yes.

I think it's a police state movie.

Sorry, but every movie is now so.

Nirvana or Pearl jam?

Nirvana.

Nirvana.

Which character from The Breakfast Club can you relate to most?

I don't know.

Yeah I don't really think that I do.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

Yeah, I was the wrong.

Well, that's tha that's that one year, I guess.

Yeah.

One year.

Southside Beehive or Oakland Beehive?

Southside.

Yeah.

I have to go Oaklan because it was my introduction.

Yeah.

I think you're only the secon person that said Oakland.

Yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

Well, thank you very much, mayor.

This has been such a good time.

I really appreciate you taking the opportunity.

Cant wait to see how it gets edited.

Thank you.

The Gen X Pittsburgh Podcast hosts are David Rullo and Valerie Christofel.

Executive producer, David Rullo.

Producer and graphic designer, Kim Rullo.

Producer, Valerie Christoffel.

Video production and editor, Brent Isaac.

Music by NeoStem.