:: There is a permanent chalk outline on the sidewalk in front of Vincenzo’s Deli in the three-block section of the city that locals call “Tiny Italy.” This is where Alfonzo Venutti was gunned down by two policemen who mistakenly believed that the large sandwich Venutti was bringing home to his wife and children was a shotgun. Whenever weather obliterates this outline, locals reconstruct it to show their respect.
:: Incandescent and compact fluorescent light bulbs in the city’s subway and bus stops use left-land threads in the bases to discourage people taking them home.
:: Price of a “VIP Skybox” seat in the operating theater at the Thompson Children’s Hospital benefit reenactment of President Lyndon B. Johnson’s gallbladder surgery for the facility’s cancer ward: $2,500
:: Number of internet cafe/oxygen bars in 1999: 8
:: Number of internet cafe/oxygen bars today: 1 (OxyZap’s, at the corner of Professor and Tolerance Streets)
:: All buildings in the Jewelry District are single-ended. The original proprietors would not do business in structures that allowed potential thieves to run through from one street to another.
:: Overheard this week in the Clarion-Journal newsroom:
“Hey, how do you spell the plural of whiskey?”
“Lunch.”
– K. Church, C, Gaines, R. White