SAFETY FIRST
Ramona Greco, 5, of Sewickley, checks on her doll riding in the seat behind her Sunday as she pedals her bike through the Armstrong Tunnel with her mom and sister during Open Streets PGH.
Bikers, runners and skaters took to the city’s roadways Sunday in the summer’s final installment of OpenStreetsPGH, an event series that promotes outdoor activity.
OpenStreets was started five years ago by nonprofit BikePGH. For three days in the summer, OpenStreets closes a select number of city streets to car traffic and opens them up to free exercise classes, kids’ activities and vendors peddling food and fitness services along the route.
Sunday’s event featured a 3.6-mile loop through Downtown, Uptown and the South Side. Along the route, circus artists did acrobatic stunts on the Birmingham Bridge as the Rollaway Dog Cafe served gourmet treats to pet owners along Forbes Avenue.
At 14th Street and East Carson Street, instructors from Pittsburgh Sword Fighters spent the morning performing demonstrations, showing off their collection of longswords and rapiers to curious passers-by. Instructor Josh Parise said the group has been attending OpenStreets for three years in hopes of spreading “the philosophy of the sword” among Pittsburgh residents.
“It’s just an interesting way to show people what opportunities they have if they are interested by the swords,” Mr. Parise said. “If your inner 12-year-old doesn’t want to stop at this booth, then you’ve basically killed your child inside.”
“We’re just kind of bringing the pointy things to the people, you know?” he added.
Among the other groups tabling near the South Side’s main hub of activity was Steel City Roller Derby, Pittsburgh’s only women’s flat-track roller derby league. Team members skated the route and passed out flyers in hopes of encouraging Pittsburghers to attend their monthly matches at Pittsburgh Indoor Sports Arena in Harmar.
“This is a great place to share what we love and get other people interested in joining and coming to our games,” team member Alissa Millenson said. “OpenStreets is about being active and moving your body and being part of the community, and those are all things that we stand for.”
They also saw the event as an opportunity to recruit new team members for their upcoming season, according to Anna Puluka.
“This is a great place to meet like-minded people who might want to try it out,” Ms. Puluka said. “They don’t need to have any experience rollerskating — we all learned through derby, and it’s a great community, so we want to get more people to join us.”
Teammate Danielle Burns added that Steel City Roller Derby is unique to the city’s sports scene in that it actively recruits and caters to Pittsburgh’s LGBTQIA community.
“Here, we’re honestly looking to meet anyone who is interested and can see themselves participating in a league that really promotes women’s and nonbinary and genderfluid folks’ inclusion in sports, because you don’t really see that in a lot of sports,” she said.