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Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership to Host First 'Rooftop Shindig'

The city skyline will be the backdrop for an ‘80s cult film favorite, when the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership and Pittsburgh Filmmakers host the first “Rooftop Shindig” Wednesday.

“We’ve been thinking about doing a film series in a unique place for a while, and so we’ve been talking about a couple different locations and some of them because of noise…things along those lines weren’t perfect,” said  Leigh White, Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership vice president of marketing and communications. “And then we started thinking, you know there’s so many great views of Pittsburgh, what if we go up? And so we thought a rooftop – that would be perfect.”

The Shindig will be held on the top level of the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s Theater Square Garage beginning at 6 p.m.

It will include a showing of “Pee Wee’s Big Adventure,” a concert and games – all for free.

For those who have never seen the Tim Burton film, it’s about a peculiar “man-child” whose bike – his most prized possession – is stolen, so he sets out across the country to find it.

“Our friends at Bike Pittsburgh are partnering with us, and as I’m sure everybody knows, these two weeks are BikeFest,” White said. “And this just fits in perfectly, I mean you can’t really find a better story about a boy who loves his bike than ‘Pee Wee’s Big Adventure.’”

Visitors can purchase food from Sonoma Grille, Perlé, Woodfired Flatbreads and Dream Cream and watch to a performance by Grand Piano.

“They’re a local Pittsburgh band, they sort of straddle rock n’ roll and some other genres, but they’ve been getting really great press around town, their shows are very lively, we think it’s a sort of perfect accompaniment to kick off the night,” White said.

She said they are also bringing their activities from Project Pop Up: Play, including corn hole, giant Connect Four, giant Jenga and giant chess.

The second Shindig will feature “The Big Lebowski” and a performance by another Pittsburgh-based band, Jimbo and the Soupbones.

“We know that Pittsburgh gets a ton of buzz for being a really cool, vibrant and exciting city,” White said. “And we hope that it’s events like these that help to continue that buzz and continue to attract interesting, young people who want to live in our city and want to be engaged.”

Jess is from Elizabeth Borough, PA and is a junior at Duquesne University with a double major in journalism and public relations. She was named as a fellow in the WESA newsroom in May 2013.