triblive.com: Pittsburgh will be woven into every aspect of the upcoming NFL Draft, which will be held Downtown and on the North Shore from April 23-25. On Tuesday, the NFL announced locally inspired art that will add another dimension to the ‘Burgh representation throughout the event.
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I do think it's cool that two Pittsburgh artists are getting paid to work on this thing that is happening in the city. At the same time I generally have problems with these big traveling things like the draft or on an even larger scale the Olympics, because it seems like it would really positively impact the place it's going to be in. But typically it really doesn't because the money that comes into the city is not actually making its way to the entire economy of the city, it just often gets stuck and doesn't actually uplift the whole community. And like as we literally were seeing if you were downtown before the draft came in our houseless neighbors were being kicked out of their homes and told to go find somewhere else which is just not okay. And yet we're talking about in this article how we want to bring in the feeling of being in Pittsburgh. Part of being in any city is that there are houseless people and so it's not the feeling of Pittsburgh because not all of our neighbors are included in it. It feels like a ridiculous thing to just do all this aesthetic fixing for people to come to town and yet none of the infrastructure is real and none of it is going to stay and they need to actually fix the roads and the sidewalks and the bridges permanently for the people who live here not just the people who come by bring the TV cameras with them.
It makes be very happy to see that an event as big as the NFL draft is so dedicated to making sure that the art and style of Pittsburgh was woven into every aspect of the event. With how many people will be attending the draft and viewing it from around the world this means that the art that will be shown in the draft will then be able to seen by millions if not billions of people around the world. An event as well known as the NFL draft could have just as easily gotten any art from anywhere to be displayed during the event, and they could of event set up contracts where the event could have made a good chunk of money from displaying said art. It gives me more faith in humanity and capitalism to see an event as big as the NFL Draft ignore or not procure more money through art deals and instead decide to honor the city that the draft will be hosted by.
I think it is really neat how the NFL draft has really leaned into Pittsburgh this year. Pittsburgh has such a strong culture, which you can really see in the art that people create here. Seeing such a large company and event support local artists is really cool. I wish that the article had pictures of either of the pieces of art though. I would have loved to look at those pieces. I also find it interesting how much that the draft had affected the city. The fact that so much city infrastructure had to be worked on prior to people coming in for the draft so that the city could actually support all those people is crazy to me. While I was told this by some friends, and haven't actually fact checked it, I was told that around 750,000-1 million people were going to be coming to Pittsburgh for the draft. It makes me wonder what would have happened if all that work hadn't been done.
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