Head Tale

Do you ever get disappointed when you realise not everything's online and instantly accessible? 

For example, tonight I was reading a recent copy of Rolling Stone which had an article called “The Mayor of Hell”.  It was about Braddock, Pennsylvania, a dying town of 2900 in Pennsylvania which is still the site of Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill (but whose workers almost exclusively come from elsewhere rather than living in a town in the shadow of a steel mill which leaves a fine dust on everything.)  How bad is the town?  Braddock was used as the backdrop for parts of the soon-to-be-released post-apocalyptic film, “The Road“. 

The town has elected a young social activist mayor named John Fetterman (who's 6'8″, 300 lbs with tattoos and a shaved head) who's trying to re-make the town as some neo-industrial experiment (can't remember the exact term the article used), inviting a “new breed of pioneer” to move there and see if they can make a go of it – whether they're artists, small business people,  modern urbanists or just looking for an inexpensive place to claim a part of the American dream.   

Unfortunately, the full article isn't online (at least on the Rolling Stone site) so you'll have to track it down the old-fashioned way if you want to read it.  I guess the main thing that caught my eye and made me think of posting this to my blog is that the town isn't just the site of Andrew Carnegie's first steel mill, it's also the site of the first-ever Carnegie library.