Chinese, Korean shorts at the Pittsburgh Independent Film Festival this weekend.

The Pittsburgh Independent Film Festival begins today---sorry for the late notice, blame the local papers---and a few short films are of relevance to this website, including: one on "a group of renegade Chinese artists"; "Winter Shower" by Kyoungju Kim; and "Door God" by Yulin Liu. Steel Cinema has a full schedule and list of synopses. Movies are shown at the Ryan Event Center in McKees Rocks (map), and as the paper says, beware road construction if you go.

Ai Wei Wei: The Fake Case at Harris Theater, from June 27.

From the official website.

The 2014 documentary Ai Wei Wei: The Fake Case will play at the Harris Theater from June 27. A summary, from the distributor's website:

After 81 days of solitary detention world famous Chinese artist Ai Weiwei is put under house arrest. He suffers from sleeping disorder and memory loss, 18 cameras are monitoring his studio and home, police agents follow his every move, and heavy restrictions from the Kafkaesque Chinese authorities weigh him down. Picking up where Alison Klayman's Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry left off, AI WEIWEI THE FAKE CASE is more explicitly political, reflecting Ai's battle against the gigantic lawsuit thrust upon him by the Chinese government in an effort to silence him. Ai Weiwei is shaken, but during his year on probation he steadily finds new ways to provoke and challenge the mighty powers of the Chinese authorities in his fight for human rights and free expression.

The Fake Case made its US debut in New York on May 16. Times and dates for the Pittsburgh run have not yet been announced, but should be on the Pittsburgh Filmmakers site shortly. The Harris Theater is located at 809 Liberty Ave., downtown, in the Cultural District (map).

BonChon coming to Philadelphia.

Bonchon, a chain of Korean fried chicken places, is coming to Philadelphia, writes Philly.com.

[I]t's being built on the ground floor of a new apartment building at 1020 Cherry St. That is across the street from Simply Shabu, the hot-pot specialist.

BonChon will have a liquor license and is pegged for a September opening.

BonChon will open in the middle of Philadelphia's Chinatown; here's a map.

Pittsburgh police brutality makes the Korean news.

From the "Korean news watching us" category, the front page of Daum, the second-largest portal in the Korean internet, Tuesday morning has screen captures from a cellphone video showing alleged police brutality at the Pittsburgh Pride parade on the 15th.

K Missing Kings at Hollywood Theater in Dormont, July 19 and 20.

On Friday, the Hollywood Theater in Dormont announced on its Facebook page it would be participating in the United States premier of the Japanese animated film K Missing Kings on July 19 and 20. The distributor Eleven Arts provides a brief summary:

Based on the hit anime K, K MISSING KINGS picks up where the series left off. Featuring the same director and scriptwriter as the series, this movie brings the characters that you've grown to love in the same spirit of action, honor, and loyalty. K MISSING KINGS also sees the return of popular voice actors such as Daisuke Namikawa, Daisuke Ono, and Tomokazu Sugita, reprising their roles for the first time on the big screen.

The story starts some time after the Island Academy Incident, in which four of the seven great Kings crossed paths. Since this time, silver clansmen Kuroh Yatogami and Neko have been searching for their master, Yashiro Isana, the Silver King. Their search having turned up fruitless, the two begin to give up hope, until they encounter Anna Kushina and Rikio Kamamoto, two members of the red clan HOMRA being chased by someone.

According to Anime News Network, the movie will premiere at the Anime Expo in Los Angeles on July 5 and will have a limited US release from July 18. There are three shows scheduled on the 19th and 20th: Saturday at 7:00 pm, Sunday at 4:00 pm, and Sunday at 7:00 pm. Tickets for the Dormont shows will be available online, though online ticket sales are currently paused.

The theater is located at 1449 Potomac Ave. in Dormont, and is accessible by Pittsburgh's subway/LRT at a block south of Potomac Station. It frequently shows newish Japanese animated films on or near their US release date, including, in recent memory: the Madoka Magica series, Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo, Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day, and Tiger & Bunny: The Rising.

Taxi fights in the old news: Pittsburgh almost had 대리운전, too.

Advertisements for a designated driver company lined up in Gangnam, from Sisa Channel.

Big local news in recent months has been the arrival of ride-share companies Uber and Lyft to Pittsburgh, and the pushback by the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission and the entrenched taxi services. Several years ago, Pittsburgh briefly had another para-taxi company called BeMyDD, which functions like the designated-driver (대리운전) services ubiquitous in South Korea. From an August 26, 2010 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article:

BeMyDD (Be My Designated Driver) started operations in Pittsburgh this week after launching in three Ohio cities earlier this year, he said.
"BeMyDD is a new twist on a transportation service which gives people an affordable alternative to the usual limo or taxi. The premise is that 'We drive YOUR car, so you don't have to,' " Mr. Simanovsky said.
The company offers two services: A customer can reserve a driver ahead of time who will meet them at a location of their choice, chauffeur them around in their own car, wait for them and take them home, for $12.50 an hour.
For those who are already out and in no condition to drive, the company will dispatch two drivers to take them and their car home. That costs $25 plus $2.95 a mile for the first 10 miles and $1.50 per mile thereafter.

"I want to repay the love I received"; local adoptee pays it forward in Korea.

On March 27, Yonhap--the South Korean wire service--ran a profile on Sarah Lynch, a local woman and Korean-American adoptee who recently visited Korea and volunteered with a Seoul orphanage. The Eastern Social Welfare Society (동방사회복지회) has the story in English; an excerpt:

On May 21, a truck which was full of diapers came out at Eastern Social Welfare Society.

The person who appeared with the truck was one of ESWS adoptees, Sara Lynch(24). She was adopted to a family in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania when 6 months, and she has been working as a tennis coach for two years, under the influence of her father who once a tennis player.

Sara Lynch visited ESWS to present diapers to the babies waiting for a loving home. She organized this drive to pay it forward and show appreciation for the love given to her from ESWS, by putting her story on the online fundraising site and asking people join in it on Facebook.

She put on it on online fundraising site(www.gofundme.com) on January 1 for a guide of 2,000USD, however, it passed the initial goal and she finally received 5,710USD within 4 months to her surprise.
With 5,700USD, she purchased rice cereals, body lotions, toys, blankets and ointments of the worth of 1,600USD in person in the U.S.A. And she purchased 85 boxes of diapers after a discussion with Eastern Social Welfare Society with the rest of fund.

Loads of photos and stories from her visit in April and May are on her trip's Facebook page.

Carnegie Library Oakland Comics Decoded Book Club does Sunny by Taiyō Matsumoto, June 16.

Sunny, Vol. 1 cover, via Amazon.

The Comics Decoded Book Club, which meets at the Carnegie Library Oakland (map) once a month, will look at Taiyō Matsumoto's Sunny next.

"Chicken bites and bubble tea" place almost here.

Signage went up yesterday at 117 Oakland Ave. (map) in Oakland for Chick'n Bubbly, a restaurant serving "Chicken bites and bubble tea". Work started late last year on the former nail salon, and it will become the sixth Asian place on that block of Oakland Avenue between Fifth and Forbes.

Chinatown bus stop still running in Oakland.

There's a sign on the door of a papered-up Oakland storefront that reads:

Retail opportunity on the ground floor of one of
Pittsburgh's hottest technology co-working spaces
116 Meyran Avenue is available for lease

116 Meyran Avenue (map) has for years been the home of a Chinatown Bus station. In spite of the sign on the door, the bus station is still up and running, a phone call to a local ticket salesman confirmed. The daily bus to New York's Chinatown leaves at 12:20 am and costs $45 each way ($65 at the door, though $45 if you mention "George", says George).

Chinatown buses enjoyed their highest popularity here before Megabus and other alternatives to Greyhound emerged. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette did a short profile on some of the lines servicing Pittsburgh in 2006, and their popularity among non-Asians given the lack of affordable intercity public transportation.

Kin Yeung of McCandless said that when he took a Fung Wah bus from New York's Chinatown to Boston, more than half of the passengers were non-Asian.

Nonetheless, "a lot of people in the Chinese community in Pittsburgh are using these bus services because they're so cheap," he said.

The Chinatown bus lines followed a business model similar to the discount lines today:

[Greyhound spokeswoman Anna] Folmnsbee said Greyhound's generally higher bus prices, for the most part, subsidized buildings and staff.

"We put a lot of money into our facilities, to make sure our passengers have a safe, comfortable, warm place to wait and customer service agents who tell you where to go to line up," she said. "Plus our passengers know we offer more schedules, a dozen to New York per day as opposed to maybe a handful."

While Ms. Folmnsbee declined to discuss how Greyhound regards the advent of low-cost Chinatown bus services, the company did sue Fung Wah in 2004 for lacking proper permits.

Google will help you learn why they aren't as popular anymore.