Bloomfield. Even the name conjures up a certain Pittsburgh magic—a kaleidoscope of row houses, proud steeples, and corner cafes rich with the aroma of roasting beans. Tucked between Liberty Avenue’s frenetic bustle and the gentle lullaby of side-street stoops is a neighborhood perpetually balancing the weight of its own history with the promise of tomorrow. But as the years have rolled by, two factions have emerged to vie for Bloomfield’s soul: the Bloomfield Development Corporation (BDC)—the so-called “Ghibblinean Faction”—and the newly founded Bloomfield Alliance- the Catholic Geulphs . 

Whispers in Yinz Coffee, half-hushed discussions at the Pleasure Bar, sky-voiced retellings at Sunday family dinners—everyone in Bloomfield knows about these two power blocks. The difference? You can see it in the clothes they wear and the coffee they drink. But to truly appreciate the ever-simmering tensions, we must first meet the champions of each side—one perched under a rakish beret, the other weighed down by old-world tradition. 

Swing your gaze to the northern boundaries of “Little Italy” and you’ll find Tyler, a prime specimen of the BDC tribe. Basil-green hair sprouts from his scalp like a rebellious vine, crowned by a rakish French beret that’s tilted just so. He wears a striped button-down—lines protesting the dictatorship of solids. Draped around his neck, a scarf shines like a patchwork mosaic of repurposed sea plastics, an homage to the environment as much as an ironic nod to couture. Cargo shorts slump at his hips, each pocket brimming with half-finished chapbooks and ethically sourced coffee beans from the Brazilian Amazon. Ah, coffee. Tyler’s lifeblood. A swirl of artisanal cold brew served in reclaimed mason jars, painstakingly imported from far-flung cooperatives where, he swears, every bean has a first name. He sports tattoos so terrible that they have transcended the boundary of bad taste into a realm of postmodern brilliance. And those sandals on his feet? Strapped manifestos. To the BDC faithful, coffee is activism, fashion is a sermon, and cargo shorts? A revolution. They hold aloft the banner of progress, innovation, and a certain brand of half-ironic, half-deadly-serious quirk that sets the BDC apart. Now, beyond that swirl of kale smoothies and sea-plastic scarves, another faction stands like a fortress of flour-dusted tradition—enter the Alliance’s champion. 

But if Tyler is the herald of the new wave, Oreste is the standard-bearer of the old guard. As part of the Bloomfield Alliance, he’s the living embodiment of Italian-American pride, woven deep into Bloomfield’s cultural tapestry. Picture a black fedora angled sharply above olive-toned skin, a robust mustache reminiscent of Marcello Mastroianni, and a gold chain peeking out from beneath a crisp white dress shirt. The sleeves of his pinstriped vest are rolled to his forearm, revealing calloused hands that have kneaded pizza dough, rolled homemade pasta, and swung a bocce ball under the Bloomfield Bridge. Oreste sips espresso from a stovetop Moka pot, the demitasse cup balanced on a saucer that cradles a single, meticulously chosen biscotti. Tradition is not just alive here—it thrives. Sunday gravy simmers for hours, cannoli must never be pre-filled, and homemade limoncello glints in the evening lantern light. The Bloomfield Alliance carries this sense of storied heritage like a shield, brandished against the kale-and-kombucha onslaught of the BDC. For them, the future might indeed be bright, but the past gleams with an even richer luster. Sun-kissed row houses, a legendary pool, and a neighborhood on the edge—let’s drift to the luminous lure of Bloomfield Beach, where the drama swelled into a veritable tempest. 

Ah, the Bloomfield Beach—a shimmering mirage of summer nostalgia! Where the incandescent Pittsburgh sun refracts off the concrete and asphalt, transforming this patch of city into its very own Mediterranean fever dream. A true Riviera of cracked sidewalks, row houses, and corner stores sweating beneath a haze of heat waves rippling up from Liberty Avenue. People came, oh, did they come! Flocking from every corner of the city, every nook and cranny of Pittsburgh life, drawn as if by some primal force—except, of course, for the Bloomfield Development Corporation (BDC). Their absence? Palpable. Heavy. Like the damp weight of a thunderstorm waiting to break. That night—I remember it!—I stepped into the Bloomfield Liedertafel. A name with more umlauts than vowels, its Teutonic roots felt almost comically out of place amidst the fiercely Italian-American soul of the neighborhood. Stoic, wood-paneled walls encased decades of history, but tonight they bore witness to a tempest brewing inside. The fate of the Bloomfield Pool—would it close for the summer or not —that was the cause célèbre. A Roman forum packed to the rafters. Every local organization sent their envoys, each jealously guarding their slice of the community pie: the respected Bloomfield Citizens Council, the BDC, and a bold, brash newcomer—the Bloomfield Alliance. The Alliance! A ragtag band of neighborhood stalwarts, fresh faces, battle-hardened veterans of the community wars. They’d seen it all. Tree after tree felled in Friendship Park—gone, erased. The silence—deafening, almost conspiratorial—when not one but two beloved churches closed their doors forever. And then, the pièce de résistance: a proposal to erect a monstrous, multi-story housing complex over the hallowed ground of the Bloomfield Community Market. They were furious! And righteous! No mere complainers, this lot. They were torchbearers, pitchfork holders, guardians of a neighborhood ethos that the rest of the world seemed hell-bent on forgetting. My mother stood among them, tall and fierce, her voice rising above the din—a premier advocate for a new old way of life. 

At the meeting’s helm, three figures loomed large. City Councilwoman Deb Gross—ah, Gross! A political stalwart, whose tenure had weathered storms and shifting tides—sat flanked by her BDC allies. She was a figure of experience, of gravitas, but tonight, she faced not one but two challenges: the fiery Alliance and a fresh contender for her seat, Jordan Botta. Botta! The everyman of Bloomfield, the archetype of local heroism. You’d see him as easily at a bocce game beneath the Bloomfield Bridge as at The Pleasure Bar’s legendary? Wisdom Corner, (which has even attracted those suburban intellectual “elites” from Fox Chapel) holding court with philosophers, dreamers, and neighborhood eccentrics. He was grassroots incarnate—a man of block parties, barbecues, door-knocking campaigns, and the casual “Hey, how ya doin’?” that made him seem more neighbor than politician. The room simmered, a pressure cooker of outrage and hope. Questions rained down like a sudden summer storm, drenching the hall in energy. And then—the heckler! Oh, the heckler! An older man, his face flushed with the indignities of age and anger, rose to speak. At first, he was almost coherent, railing against the neglect of neighborhood facilities, the decay of community spirit. But then—boom! Out of nowhere, the words exploded like a firecracker: “WHITE LIVES MATTER!” The crowd froze, a collective intake of breath, then erupted into a chorus of BOOS so loud it practically shook the wood-paneled walls. He stood there, defiant for a heartBEAT, then skimmered away, dishonorably discharged from the proceedings, a dark footnote in an otherwise luminous night. 

And THEN—like some medieval throwback, a Guelphs-vs.-Ghibellines meltdown in the heart of Bloomfield!—two local churches and the neighborhood Catholic school shuttered their doors (WHAM! BANG! GONE!), leaving the Alliance faithful more incensed than the Vatican on Judgment Day. Cue the howls, the wails, the Sunday-parking-lot vigils complete with altars lit by flickering LED candles because the real votives were locked away somewhere behind chains and caution tape. “We must save these sacred temples of spaghettata e spirituality!” they cried, summoning the ghostly echoes of centuries-old crusaders. And yes, by Saint Anthony’s parted mustache, the Alliance actually mailed a cherry-red Appeal to the Holy See in the Vatican—an impassioned call to rescue Bloomfield’s venerable chapels from the grim reaper of “redevelopment.” Meanwhile, the BDC? Zip, nada, bupkis! They sat on their ergonomic chairs, purring about “mixed-use expansions” and “socioeconomic synergy,” as if the entire fiasco was a cappuccino cameo in the grand drama of “progresso”. So there they stood, two warring factions all over again, Guelphs and Ghibellines reborn in cargo shorts and pinstriped vests—each crusading for the soul of Bloomfield, the Alliance raising their old Italian arms to the heavens, the BDC sipping espressos with a shrug—”church closures? Not our department, pal.” Oh the Humanity! Those damn secularized bastards! Don’t they know Bloomfield is a traditional catholic neighborhood? Dozens of churchgoers who usually commute by the nice walk across town, meeting smiling faces as they go, now extinct. All for a new church brewery, which already exists just a couple streets down in Lawrenceville. Ah the Ghibellines, always supporting the secular societies like Lawrenceville since the age of Dante!

Oh, those flickering fluorescents in the Liedertafel’s vaulted hall—mercury vapor dreams dancing on chipped linoleum, reflecting the feverish worry etched into every nervous face! The great Bloomfield Alliance organized a meeting regarding the recent uptick in crime. The club was in full roar, ladies and gentlemen, with the shrill laments of stolen catalytic converters and battered backyard bicycles reverberating to the rafters. The speakers coughed and clicked, and one by one, these outraged neighbors shook their fists at the gloom descending on the stoops: porch pirates, nighttime prowlers, all that unspeakable devilry lurking in the alley shadows. It was a J’Accuse! chorus, a carnival of complaint aimed at the big, nebulous THEM—whoever let the streetlights go dim, the patrol cars drift away, the predators roam free. And right there, turned away from the sputtering mic, draped across the back row like cats grown bored of the show, were the BDC boys—lapels unbuttoned, arms folded, eyebrows flickering with a sort of bemused, Sphinxlike disinterest. They gave the Alliance not so much as a courtesy clap. Standoffish? Aloof? Perhaps. But the message was as loud as a slot-machine jangle in a Vegas chapel: We, the BDC, are not to be moved by your porch-pirate sob stories. And oh, how the crowd loathed them for it! Then came City Councilwoman Deb Gross—a name that, to the folks grappling with stolen bikes, cars, and rummaged trash cans, sounded like a scratched record repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating, repeating: She’s the reason the BDC gets to sit so pretty! She’s the reason we’ve had to up our porch cameras and triple-lock our car doors! Yes, unfortunately the BDC-backed Gross bested Botta during the election. Turns out only focusing on Lawrenceville, the most populous neighborhood and relying upon incumbency wins you elections; BUT NOT THE PEOPLE OF BLOOMFIELD. The election honeymoon was over. The outrage now was so thick you could cut it with a butter knife. This was an outright, pitchfork-in-hand revolt. The confederation had mobilized the many “city states” of Little Italy, ready to finally unite the peninsula. Residents of Friendship Avenue, Liberty Avenue, Sciota Street, young and old, liberal and conservative, women and men, all outraged! You’d have thought Botta was Garibaldi!

Because Deb Gross—oh, proud and polished in her suited finery, perfectly coiffed, a flicker of a triumphant grin ever on her lips—was presiding yet again, stoking the promise of more cops on corners, more “LOCK YOUR CAR, DUMMY” signage, more community grants tossed out like 

so many T-shirts at halftime. But the Alliance had tired of hollow vows. They wanted real steel in the spine, real action in the soggy crater of Bloomfield’s battered pride. In that swirl of rhetorical fireworks, the poor woman stood accused by the very neighbors she’d pledged to save. She was the BDC’s golden candidate, yes, the heir-apparent to neighborhood dominion—and now, good heavens, the Alliance was after her. They demanded her explanation, her contrition, her penance in the face of stolen property, cars, and sleepless nights.

But for every protestor’s war cry, the BDC stooges offered not a syllable. Instead, they stared forward, stone-faced, as if memorizing the cracks in the Liedertafel’s plaster. Citizens hissed, groaned, threatened to form volunteer patrols—call it a righteous new neighborhood watch, maybe. And through it all, Deb Gross—her eyes flicking about the stormy crowd—managed that sweet politician’s smile, refusing to yield one millimeter of stage, doubling down on sweeping statements about “bigger police presence,” “community revitalization,” you name it. The crowd roiled, the tension soared, and from the furthest seat in the far back row, it looked like the BDC reps were folding deeper into themselves—caught between their champion’s promise and the community’s wrath, oh, how that hush roared! The real war for Bloomfield’s future, it seemed, was just beginning, and with an anger so thick you could pour it over pancakes, the Alliance rose up to claim its piece of the neighborhood back from the dream so splendidly pitched and so evidently left to rot. 

And then, as if the heavens themselves were testing the neighborhood’s resolve, came the Christmas Mutiny—a scandal so absurd it could only happen in Bloomfield. What began as a vision of festive unity—a celebration of twinkling lights and candy-cane camaraderie—descended into a farce of stolen ideas and tinsel-clad treachery. The ancient Citizens Council, wielding their decades of influence like a sharpened snowflake, swooped in and claimed the contest as their own. The Alliance, blindsided, bellowed their outrage: “They stole Christmas!” Shaken, rattled, and just a little bit scorched at the edges—that’s how the Bloomfield Alliance felt when their sparkling, peppermint-laced, Santa-Slam-Dunk-Christmas-Decorating-Contest-Extravaganza idea was suddenly snatched—SNATCHED!—straight out of their candy-striped hands. 

But, oh, yes, let’s rewind. Picture the row houses of Bloomfield lining Liberty Avenue—taut, tidy, and oh-so-tightly-packed—where every winter the bulbs flicker, the tinsel sparkles, and the sidewalks smell like pine needles and powdered sugar. Enter the Bloomfield Alliance, with their annual “Ho-Ho-Ho, Let’s Deck These Halls” plan. They had it all mapped out: 

1. Candy Cane Countdowns in every shop window, 

2. Window Wonderland murals displayed with new-fallen snow, 

3. A grand finale of twinkling lights, reindeers, Santas on stoops, la-di-dah, and sugarplums in your coffee.

Glorious! 

Gorgeous! 

Gone?! 

Because the Citizens Council—the venerable Bloomfield Citizens Council—yes, that venerable cadre of the older generation (the ones who’ve lived through eight or nine or maybe nine-and-a-half incarnations of Pittsburgh’s sports fortunes, wave after wave) apparently got wind of these sprightly plans. Swoop! Out they come, pinning on holiday badges, claiming the idea for themselves—THEMSELVES!—like some tinsel-bedazzled version of identity theft. 

All because one Linda Vacca (Bless her holly-jolly soul), a leading luminary of the Bloomfield Alliance, innocently confided her Clark Griswoldian vision to the Council. And then? A hush, a whisper, a grin—poof! The next day the older, more aged group (like a fine cheese or maybe a stale fruitcake, depending on your perspective!) took the plan, sprinkled “Citizens Council Official Seal” all over it, and, in a stunt worthy of cunning elves, broadcast it as their brilliant Christmas Contest. 

Cue the outraged howls from the Alliance faithful—“New mutiny!” they hollered.

● “What nerve, what gall??!” 

● “Those Conniving old bastards! 

● “They haven’t done anything in years, now they steal our ideas!” 

Yes, that’s the line. The cry of the outraged. The deck-the-halls denizens of Bloomfield Alliance fully armed with scowls and sharpened plastic candy canes, ready to stake their rightful claim. Meanwhile, the Citizens Council? Probably sipping cocoa, cackling, “Oh, hush, it’s just a misunderstanding… Merry Christmas, dear.” Spouted the president of the BCC. 

And so the row houses stand witness to what might be the great Bloomfield Christmas Contest Controversy of the century. Tinsel tension. Reindeer rivalry. Santa subterfuge. So ring the jingle bells, folks—the bloom and the field are about to see some real holiday fireworks. 

Peace on Earth? Pshhhh. Not on Liberty Avenue, not this year! 

Still, Bloomfield endures—because for all the squabbles, the neighborhood’s heart beats stronger than any single faction’s agenda. Whether you’re a Tyler or an Oreste, a staunch BDC proponent or an Alliance devotee, a Citizens Council loyalist or an separatist in Friendship( Yes, Friendship is rightfully Bloomfield territory), Bloomfield has room for every espresso style and every brand of holiday festooning. On Liberty Avenue, you might find them sitting side by side—Tyler in his sandals of protest, Oreste in his polished oxfords—both sipping coffee, debating the future of Bloomfield. And if you listen closely, you just might hear the faint jingle of Christmas bells or the giddy shouts of kids at the pool, reminding everyone that the story of Bloomfield is still being written, day after day, year after year, generation after generation. But if you ask me, Per la nostra patria di Bloomfield! Proteggiamo la nostra eredità, la nostra storia, e il nostro futuro (For our homeland of Bloomfield! Let us protect our heritage, our history, and our future!)