Steel City Vice

11/27/2024

Did yinz know that under every building foundation and rock in Pittsburgh there's a mob story? Or a ghost story. Okay, maybe not every building .... Are you new to the South Side or a 4th generation resident who wants to know more about your house or the building where your business is located? No problem. History is Steel City Vice's hustle. Now that it's too cold for walking tours, the weather is perfect for some deep digging in the city's archives. What are you waiting for?

10/04/2024

Pittsburgh is about to lose a whole mess of underworld history after these Fifth Avenue buildings are demolished.

09/30/2024

We had a lively group of South Siders on last weekend's South Side by the Numbers walking tour. We paused in front of the former Lotus Club for a group photo. 📸 by Laura Hussey via Ashley Cortazzo.

09/27/2024

Newport, Kentucky, was a mob town for much of the 20th century. Controlled by the Cleveland syndicate led by Moe Dalitz, Newport was a wide-open city with gambling, prostitution, and bootleg booze. There's lots that Newport has in common with Pittsburgh, including the Cleveland syndicate's activities in both cities. A curious fact about Newport involves its one-way streets. Monmouth Street, which is one-way northbound was filled with so-called "day houses" like the Pepper Pod, which was a restaurant and brothel. The theory was that commuters heading north into Cincinnati could stop off at one of the many joints along Monmouth on the way to work. The southbound York Street catered to the homeward bound traffic with its "night houses." One of the most colorful holdovers from those days is the Brass Ass nightclub, one of two surviving Monmouth Street strip clubs. Formerly known as the Silver Slipper and the Stardust, the Brass Ass had it all.

09/10/2024

There's lots more than mob history to see & hear on the South Side by the Numbers walking tour.
Learn about life in the South Side during the 20th century where millions of workers had to take second & third jobs to make ends meet in buildings like this one. Tour info link in the comments.

09/03/2024

How numbers gambling took root in Pittsburgh's Hill District.

For much of the twentieth century, numbers gambling defined much of the Hill District’s economic and social landscapes. The street lottery immortalized in August Wilson’s plays and Hill District or…

09/02/2024

New fall dates for South Side by the Numbers walking tours. Dates & registration:

South Side by the Numbers is a stroll through South Side Flats mob history. Visit the spots where the action was decades before the steel mill closed and brunch menus replaced numbers slips. Betwee…

08/31/2024

Meet Mae Scheible, one of Pittsburgh's most enigmatic madams.

While researching a feature story on the history of brothels and s*x work in Pittsburgh, I tried to wrap my head around Mae Scheible’s incredible story. Her name appears in several overviews …

08/29/2024

Forget "Hell with the lid off," Pittsburgh was "one giant brothel."

Did you know that brothels are up there with the Steelers and U.S. Steel when it comes to what put Pittsburgh on the map?

07/24/2024

Pennsylvania’s penal code (1860) is required reading when writing about the history of Pittsburgh brothels.

06/18/2024

It’s a hot one out there … just like the summer of 1930 when a heatwave gripped Pittsburgh. Not all of the heat in 1930 came from the weather, though. On July 4, a group of gambling racketeers opened the Guyasuta Kennel Club at an O’Hara Township amusement park. Over the next two months, their drama played out in local newspapers as the district attorney tried to shut down the track. The drama ended, appropriately enough, in flames when the amusement park burned after the dog track was put out of business. Curious yet? Guyasuta Gangsters tells the dog track story and lots more in a free program hosted by the Carnegie Library’s South Side branch.

Date: Tuesday June 25
Time: 6-7pm
Cost: Free
Website: https://www.carnegielibrary.org/event/local-history-talk-guyasuta-gangsters-pittsburgh-mobsters-and-their-ill-fated-dog-track/

06/10/2024

Did yinz know that the Pennsylvania lottery debuted in 1972? Five years later, the lottery added a daily number game (I wonder where they got that idea). What's the state of state lotteries in 2024? Here's a recent Washington Post article.

This week, we explored the geography of sports betting and — much like the majority of gamblers — found ourselves at a loss. So we doubled down.