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Starting from Ground Zero
Sunday, July 01, 2001 By Caroline Abels, Post-Gazette Cultural Arts Writer
Lars brought beer.
It was only his second Ground Zero meeting, but someone joked the week before that he had to bring beer next time to stay in the group.
So he played along and hauled in a case of Straub for the few people who'd gathered in Oakland to plan the fourth "Flux," a night of live music, dance and performance art staged every few months by Ground Zero.
"Hey, who brought the beer?" asked a latecomer. At which point everyone raised their bottles to Lars before getting down to work.
By the next week, Lars was checking on tent prices for Flux no. 4, which will take place Saturday on the South Side. A week after that, he was sending out the meeting announcements. The week after that, he was given the important task of signing up artists for the event.
In a city where your credentials, your connections and your wallet are often what count, Lars Cleath, 27, of Oakland, a musician whose day job is with Strategic Energy, didn't have to know anyone to get "in" with Ground Zero, a network of people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, who are trying to improve urban life in Pittsburgh through projects that embrace the city's authenticity. He didn't have to pay a membership fee, either, or get elected by a board of directors.
That's because Ground Zero doesn't care who you are, as long as you believe the key to Pittsburgh's future lies in its underground arts scene, its valuable architecture and its quirky neighborhoods; as long as you're willing to show up, work hard and be counted on; and as long as you don't complain about Pittsburgh without offering to do something about it.
In essence, Ground Zero is nothing more than a few dozen people like Lars who oversee a few projects meant to tweak the city in small but significant ways. Although they have no money, no staff -- not even a telephone number -- they have accomplished a few ambitious initiatives since forming a year ago and have been praised for their "no-talk, all-action" work ethic.
It's not a well-known group, though. It has trouble articulating its mission and is combating a perception that it's a closed clique of friends. It isn't sure what direction it's headed in and none of its members will predict how long it will last.
But in a city that's wringing its hands over how to keep people under 40 from leaving, Ground Zero has given a voice to a subgroup of "young people" who delight in Pittsburgh's quirkier aspects, who are eager to support local artists and who don't want more strip malls or chain stores in town.
They'd much rather take the Chart Room.
The Chart Room is the Downtown bar where Ground Zero was born a year ago and where its members and supporters gather for happy hour every Thursday. An unpretentious bar at 310 Forbes Ave., it is distinguished by working-class customers, cheap hamburgers and a complete lack of fancy beer.
Owner Zack Vlahos, a native of Greece, watches from a bar stool each Thursday as young people wearing everything from suits to linen dresses to leather coats show up to kick around ideas on how to improve Pittsburgh.
"Nice people," he says. "Clean. Pleasant. They keep the place alive."
The Chart Room was one of the buildings slated to be torn down as part of Mayor Tom Murphy's "Market Place at Fifth and Forbes" plan, which would have razed more than 60 Downtown buildings to make way for big-name national retailers and chain restaurants.
Though it has since died, the plan is why the Chart Room is the "Cheers" of Ground Zero: The group opposed the Fifth and Forbes plan through a position statement distributed to local politicians, and now the group patronizes the bar "to revitalize Downtown one beer at a time," as its slogan goes, and to show government officials that authentic establishments housed in old buildings mean something to a segment of the city's young people.
Besides, Pat Clark loves it. A witty, high-energy 40-year-old who helped found Ground Zero, he sees the Chart Room as an antidote to "global blanding" -- the fact that more American cities are resembling each other due to the proliferation of chain stores and cookie-cutter buildings.
"It's stupid," he said recently. "At a certain point, people are gonna look up after 75 percent of the globe has been blanded and notice places like Pittsburgh's Downtown -- if it's still intact and operating, knock on wood. And Downtown's gonna be worth a lot of money -- a lot more than a city that has gutted its urban fabric."
His philosophy is shared by most Ground Zero members. Fitting, then, that the Chart Room was where the group was born.
On May 5, 2000, about 150 people gathered at the bar to both praise and complain about Pittsburgh, and to brainstorm ways to physically make the city a better place -- not to brainstorm more ways to talk about making it better.
They'd received an e-mail invitation from Jonathan Kline, a soft-spoken 27-year-old architect at Urban Design Associates who had attended an earlier, similar brainstorming session at the Mattress Factory sponsored by Richard Florida, a Carnegie Mellon University professor of regional economic development.
Florida had just completed research that showed young high-tech workers are attracted to cities with vibrant, street-level arts scenes. When the club Graffiti closed that spring, he'd gathered some young professionals to talk about how to move the city in that direction. At the Mattress Factory, he asked the mostly architects and designers what they disliked about Pittsburgh -- and what were they gonna do about it?
The challenge registered with a few people, including Kline, architects Christine Brill and Alexandra LaPorte, and musician Ben Hartlage.They, in turn, organized the Chart Room event on May 5, at which lots of complaints, compliments and constructive ideas poured out. Issues that kept surfacing included the isolation of Pittsburgh's neighborhoods, the city's negative self-image and the public's lack of awareness of many local artists.
To tackle those issues, project teams were formed a month later. The people on those teams became the first members of Ground Zero and the leaders of those teams became the "core group." Some of the original people have left, but been replaced by new members. In fact, the group's composition can look different from month to month.
Soon projects began to take shape: Flux, the arts event; the Ultra Violet Loop, a pilot program that runs buses through key entertainment districts on weekend evenings; and the Happenings List, a weekly e-mail of under-the-radar arts events sent to about 850 people.
Those early projects had one thing in common: getting people and communities connected. And the people working on those projects relied on the cheapest, fastest way to get people connected: e-mail. Internal e-mail lists were created and members were encouraged to forward e-mails to friends, thereby attracting new blood to the group.
Some young people around town say they've stayed away from Ground Zero because it appears to be a tight-knit group of friends. But members say they don't hang out much with each other much except on Thursdays at the Chart Room, and many didn't know each other before the initial meetings.
Just after those meetings, the core group debated whether to become a not-for-profit organization but decided against it because they feared getting bogged down in bureaucracy.
"You tend to say, 'Oh, I have to figure out where I'm going to get support,' and 'How will I do this?' and 'Oh, my God, where will I get the money?' "says Traci Jackson, a core group member. "But instead you have to think, 'This is what I can do now,' and you build on what you have, piece by piece."
There aren't any presidents or vice presidents, either, because the group wants everyone to work equally hard and avoid leadership disputes.
"There's no power struggle in Ground Zero because there's no power structure," says Ben Hartlage, a 28-year-old core group member and guitarist in the band Coal Train.
Pat Clark says there's no other way to get things done in Pittsburgh. The city's power brokers, he says, get so mired in politics and procedures that young people can't rely on anyone but themselves to make Pittsburgh a better place.
"You have to do things yourself and stick them under somebody's nose," he says. "And beyond that, you have to take their nose and bring it down to the table and say, 'Here it is! This is what we're talking about!' Because there's this amazing disconnect between groups of people that say, 'We want to know what young people have to say,' and the young people themselves."
Ground Zero sees more than just a gap between young people and the establishment, though. It also sees a disconnect between local artists, and between those artists and the public. Closing those gaps was the impetus for Flux.
State of Flux
"It ain't prom," says Traci Jackson, head of the Flux committee.
She's also talking about Flux, which takes place every few months in a different Pittsburgh building that's in a state of flux and isn't highly orchestrated. It's a maze of artists given free rein so that creativity can emerge.
"When you tell someone, 'Do what you think is best,' they will," says Jackson, 28, a devotee of bluegrass music who until recently was director of business development at Bally Design. "You have to take away the constraints."
At Flux events, poets recite their words, visual artists paint, bands rock and eclecticism rules. The beer is free. The audience is curious. City Council President Bob O'Connor even showed up at Flux no. 3 in March to ask the young people there for their mayoral vote.
Many of the artists involved aren't well-known locally, so they appreciate the exposure.
"I work in the arts full time and there are so many artists I still don't know exist," says Kerry Spindler, a former Flux team member and arts program fellow at the Heinz Endowments. "They're visible in a lot of individual circles, but when you put them all together, there's a synergy."
Spindler adds that Flux audiences want "a different experience of arts and culture -- something casual, one-night-only, with the feeling of a party. And they want to see a new building."
Colleen Russell Criste, marketing director at The Andy Warhol Museum, says Flux "has created a buzz that people are paying attention to. It's causing arts people to think about what they're doing for local artists."
Staging Flux in unusual buildings in various neighborhoods fulfills another Ground Zero mission: getting Pittsburgh residents acquainted with unfamiliar communities. Rob Stephany, director of real estate development for East Liberty Development Inc., says his organization was happy to give $2,000 to Flux no. 2, held last October in the future East Liberty home of Whole Foods. Stephany said the event mirrored East Liberty's goal of becoming an arts destination through the renovation of old buildings.
"Ground Zero is willing to engage the neighborhoods if the neighborhoods are willing to engage them," Stephany says. "The group gets past the analysis-paralysis problem and really makes things happen."
Each Flux costs about $1,000, which Ground Zero obtains from the development group of whatever neighborhood Flux is in. About $15,000 worth of donations also helps: for posters, beer, advertisements. And hours of sweat equity are involved.
Committee members are wary of getting more money for the event, fearing that would change its gritty feel. "It's cool being bootstrapped," Jackson says, although one day the novelty of Flux could wear off and the donations could drop off with it.
In that case, Flux could die out. But that isn't as distressing to members as it might seem. Jackson believes a project shouldn't dangle on life support if the energy to keep it going dries up. In that case, people's energy can be directed toward other projects.
Like the Ultra Violet Loop.
Busing it
Not many people have ridden on the buses that travel the Ultra Violet Loop because the buses have run on only four nights since the fall. The Loop is just a pilot project.
But the idea is to do something low-key (Ground Zero is not about big, overreaching plans) that shows the Port Authority of Allegheny County that there's a need for a free bus that stops in the core business districts of different neighborhoods on Friday and Saturday nights.
The way it works is that a few buses travel in a continuous loop, stopping at cultural destinations, bars, clubs and clusters of restaurants in neighborhoods like Oakland, Friendship, the South Side and the Strip District. It's not a bar bus, though. "Bar bus reminds me of throwing up on the back of the bus driver," says Clark, who's on the UV project team.
Instead, it's meant to serve students in Oakland who don't have cars, city residents who aren't familiar with certain parts of town, tourists who want to see more of the city, and anyone who wants to drink and not drive.
The idea for such a bus had been bubbling among a range of people in different organizations: Ground Zero, PUMP (Pittsburgh Urban Magnet Project) and the New Idea Factory in the office of Allegheny County Executive Jim Roddey. Five people from those groups formed a committee last year and got the idea rolling with a grant from the PNC Foundation and a test run during the first Flux.
Despite low initial numbers, the buses were popular during the International Sculpture Conference in June and the Neighborhoods USA conference in May. Over the course of both weekend conferences, participants made about 4,200 rides on the Loop buses to various spots around Pittsburgh
"It's not just for young people," says Seth Hufford, 26, who works for Leadership Pittsburgh and is a member of the UV team. "If you're here for a conference Downtown, you have no idea there's a bunch of little Italian restaurants in Bloomfield. It's a no-brainer. It's just a matter of convincing the establishment that it can work."
Granted, the Loop -- named after the city's colored belt system and an actress in Andy Warhol films -- has kinks to work out. For example, during last month's run it took an hour for one bus to get from Downtown to Friendship, a drive of about 20 minutes. There were numerous stops, and the bus driver got lost.
But the Port Authority has been listening. Though it's not planning on instituting such a loop system now, according to spokesman Bob Grove, it has been meeting with the UV committee since last summer.
"We thought it was great that there were young people taking an interest in public transit," Grove says.
The UV project shows that Ground Zero is not only willing to work with "the establishment," but with an organization like PUMP, another "young people's group" that shares Ground Zero's goal of keeping young people in town but that employs different means. PUMP primarily coordinates issue forums, conventions and tours, while Ground Zero undertakes more physical projects. And unlike Ground Zero, PUMP has a board of directors, membership fees -- and a telephone number.
A few members of Ground Zero used to be in PUMP but craved more "social activism" and a more distinct aesthetic and political viewpoint. Still, some outside observers say Ground Zero is not always good at articulating that viewpoint.
"If you're not in the core group, then Ground Zero is some fuzzy, mythical thing that pops up and does a Flux event now and then," says Steve Auterman, an architect who attended some early meetings. "It's not clear what they want to do. They have so many little messages but haven't been able to focus them or distill them into clearer ideals."
Members admit to this. They also acknowledge it's hard for people to understand that Ground Zero doesn't exist to take on the project ideas of others but gives people the resources and motivation to coordinate their own projects. As one member put it: "If you've got a good idea and you want to make it happen, then -- guess what? -- you're in charge."
"The world looks at a group like this and says, you should do this, or, you should say something about that," Jackson says. "But it's not about what should or shouldn't be done. It's about what we have the energy we have to do."
More groundbreakers
And what are they doing now?
In recent months, new projects have been launched and adopted as Ground Zero endeavors. They include:
Core members say Ground Zero could look quite different down the road as a result of these regular idea sessions. New projects could come into the fold, old projects could fade away, current members could leave the group or an influx of new people could join.
The key, they say, is how to keep the group "organic" while growing, how to move people toward action rather than pontificating, how to get them concentrate on immediate problems that are solvable, how to bring in a more diverse membership and how to get more involved in different neighborhoods.
For now, the group is taking things day by day, keeping the meaning of its name in mind. The definition of "ground zero" is not just the point at which a nuclear explosion occurs but the center of any intense activity or change.
Clark gave the group that name a year ago, not only because he "couldn't think of anything better" but because he sensed that the people who came to the Chart Room in May last year could change what they were ranting about and celebrate what they were praising.
"There's all manner of young people," he said recently. "The manner that ultimately count are the ones who actually do something."
Ground Zero can be reached through its Web site: http://www.gzpgh.com/.
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