The 60-year-old small business owner walks up and down Penn Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Strip District business neighborhood, talking to fellow business owners, handling small problems, grabbing lunch outside at Cafe Raymond or just striking up conversations with people along the street.
Most people call him by another name: Jimmy Yinzer. He gets the Yinzer moniker because that is what he named the black-and-gold filled stores he owns along this ancient city neighborhood. The word is a homage to the distinct dialect in this Appalachian city, thanks in large part to the Scots-Irish population who settled the region.
Instead of “you all” or “you guys,” people around here say “yinz.”
Most people who live or visit here and are Steelers fans make his stores their first destination. When you think of the Steelers, you think Yinzers. There are Terrible Towels, keychains, pants, dresses, leggings, footballs, sweatshirts, hats and car mats.
There are outrageous black-and-gold camouflage pants and black Steelers hats with bright-gold fake hair flowing out the back. His stores along Penn Avenue have everything needed to create the most kicked-out Steelers man cave or she shed in the country. There are three Yinzer stores within one block of each other on Penn Avenue (with one under repairs from a recent fire).
His customer base is like a miniature United Nations. A variety of different languages, muffled slightly by masks, fill the air within his stores and the tables outside them.
When the pandemic hit, he adjusted. When a fire broke out in the middle of the night at his flagship store, he wept. So did the city. Then, he adjusted.
When the NFL decided to inject politics into its brand with advertising, social media posts and tributes on their uniforms, he adjusted, but it hasn’t been easy.
“Back in 2016, when the NFL first became mired in politics, I took a hit in sales,” he said. “The same in 2017. This year was no different. I saw my sales drop in a year when sales were already far below our regular numbers. People don’t want the places they go to escape from stress and drama to amplify the stress and drama.”
In 2016, when Colin Kaepernick first kneeled for the national anthem, the NFL experienced an 8% dip in television ratings during the regular season, compared to the year before.
The slide continued in 2017, with television ratings dropping another 9.7% as the football organization continued to look more like a social justice organization than the one place where a guy from Canton, Ohio, could have something in common with a guy in Manhattan because they root for the same team.
Those shared touchstones continued to evaporate this year as the NFL upped its social justice activism (combined with pandemic), resulting in another dip in viewership.
The Pittsburgh Steelers is a unique brand in that it rose in accomplishments and talent while the city was falling to its knees in the 1970s as steel mill after steel mill closed. People around here had little to look forward to except this rough-and-tumble team that beat back odds and expectations and won four Super Bowls within six years.
The Terrible Towel, nothing but a common dish rag, became the city’s unofficial symbol, and Steeler Nation was born.
As families were forced to move across the country or abroad, they never let go of their Pittsburgh roots. Those expats became the reason thousands of Steelers bars exist around the world.
“The very idea that that sentiment has diminished, even a small amount, is sad,” Yinzer said.
Jimmy Yinzer is the quintessential American story. He came from nothing and did poorly in school but never stopped pushing to live the American dream. He began his retail experience working at the former Kaufmann’s department store selling furniture, but he wanted more. So he started a second job, one he created selling merchandise on a table on Penn Avenue.
It was on that street where, as a vendor hawking trinkets, he learned the hum of the city and the intricacies of reading people and building relationships. It was backbreaking years on the pavement, whether it was pouring rain, 100 degrees or snowing. No matter what, he pulled up in his van before the sun came out and set up to serve the city and its tourists.
He got his first storefront 15 years ago and the second one seven years later. His beloved flagship store was a purchase of love, the former home of the Feinberg Variety. It was where the Terrible Towel was first sold 40 years ago. When the Feinberg family retired, he bought the building.
Last spring, a fire tore through the roof. He is still wading through the insurance bureaucracies to open it back up.
But outside of it, on an unseasonably sunny fall day last week, he had a table set up and was selling merchandise, just like the old days. And now the city’s beloved team has a remarkable 8-0 game record, its best start in its long history.
“When you walk into my stores, you are part of a community, a family. Everyone, no matter where they come from or what color they are, when you walk in here, there is this sense that we are all in this together,” he said. “My fans have not changed, but outside forces are dragging them down. We never do anything political here, and I think that is a good business model because your customers have a wide variety of different viewpoints. And we make sure all of those viewpoints are respected.”
Sports team owners decided, beginning in 2016 and continuing through this year, to bet on younger people’s consumer activism instead of older, loyal and prosperous lifelong customers’ preference to just watch the game.
That decision doesn’t just hit their bottom line. It hits people like Jimmy Yinzer.
As one customer in the store said: “It used to be I scheduled my entire Sunday around football games. That does not happen anymore. If it’s on and I am home, I watch. But I am not decked out in my game jersey. Right now, I am not feeling it.” He was purchasing a brand-new black-and-gold sweatshirt with “Yinzer” blazed across the front for his wife.
It’s a purchase that proves businessmen like Jimmy Yinzer know their customers.
Salena Zito is a CNN political analyst, and a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between.
The New Democrats have declared a federal byelection victory in their Winnipeg stronghold riding of Elmwood—Transcona.
The NDP candidate Leila Dance told supporters in a tearful speech that even though the final results weren’t in, she expected she would see them in Ottawa.
With several polls still to be counted, Conservative candidate Colin Reynolds conceded defeat and told his volunteers that they should be proud of what the Conservatives accomplished in the campaign.
Political watchers had a keen eye on the results to see if the Tories could sway traditionally NDP voters on issues related to labour and affordability.
Meanwhile in the byelection race in the Montreal riding of LaSalle—Émard—Verdun the NDP, Liberals and Bloc Québécois remained locked in an extremely tight three-way race as the results trickled in slowly.
The Liberal stronghold riding had a record 91 names on the ballot, and the results aren’t expected until the early hours of the morning.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
VANCOUVER – An incumbent BC United legislative member has reversed her decision not to seek re-election and has announced she’ll run as an Independent in the riding of West Vancouver-Capilano in the upcoming British Columbia election.
Karin Kirkpatrick has been a vocal critic of BC United Leader Kevin Falcon’s decision last month to suspend the party’s campaign and throw support behind the B.C. Conservatives under John Rustad.
Kirkpatrick announced her retirement this year, but said Monday that her decision to re-enter the race comes as a direct result of Falcon’s actions, which would force middle-of-the-road voters to “swing to the left” to the NDP or to move further right to the Conservatives.
“I did hear from a lot of constituents and a lot of people who were emailing me from across B.C. … that they didn’t have anybody to vote for,” she said. “And so, I looked even at myself, and I looked at my riding, and I said, ‘Well, I no longer have anybody to vote for in my own riding.’ It was clearly an issue of this missing middle for the more moderate voter.”
She said voters who reached out “don’t want to vote for an NDP government but felt deeply uncomfortable” supporting the provincial Conservatives, citing Rustad’s tolerance of what she calls “extreme views and conspiracy theorists.”
Kirkpatrick joins four other incumbent Opposition MLAs running as Independents, including Peace River South’s Mike Bernier, Peace River North’s Dan Davies, Prince George-Cariboo’s Coralee Oakes and Tom Shypitka in Kootenay-Rockies.
“To be honest, we talk just about every day,” Kirkpatrick said about her fellow BC United incumbents now running as Independents. “We’re all feeling the same way. We all need to kind of hold each other up and make sure we’re doing the right thing.”
She added that a number of first-time candidates formerly on the BC United ticket are contacting the group of incumbents running for election, and the group is working together “as good moderates who respect each other and lift each other up.”
But Kirkpatrick said it’s also too early to talk about the future of BC United or the possibility of forming a new party.
“The first thing we need to do is to get these Independent MLAs elected into the legislature,” she said, noting a strong group could play a power-broker role if a minority government is elected. “Once we’re there then we’re all going to come together and we’re going to figure out, is there something left in BC United, BC Liberals that we can resurrect, or do we need to start a new party that’s in the centre?”
She said there’s a big gap left in the political spectrum in the province.
“So, we just have to do it in a mindful way, to make sure it’s representing the broadest base of people in B.C.”
Among the supporters at Kirkpatrick’s announcement Monday was former longtime MLA Ralph Sultan, who held West Vancouver-Capilano for almost two decades before retiring in 2020.
The Metro Vancouver riding has been a stronghold for the BC Liberals — the former BC United — since its formation in 1991, with more than half of the votes going to the centre-right party in every contest.
However, Kirkpatrick’s winning margin of 53.6 per cent to the NDP’s 30.1 per cent and the Green’s 15.4 per cent in the 2020 election shows a rising trend for left-leaning voters in the district.
Mike McDonald, chief strategy officer with Kirk and Co. Consulting, and a former campaign director for the BC Liberals and chief of staff under former Premier Christy Clark, said Independent candidates historically face an uphill battle and the biggest impact may be splitting votes in areas where the NDP could emerge victorious.
“It really comes down to, if the NDP are in a position to get 33 per cent of the vote, they might have a chance of winning,” McDonald said of the impact of an Independent vote-split with the Conservatives in certain ridings.
He said B.C. history shows it’s very hard for an Independent to win an election and has been done only a handful of times.
“So, the odds do not favour Independents winning the seats unless there is a very unique combination of circumstances, and more likely that they play a role as a spoiler, frankly.”
The B.C. Conservatives list West Vancouver School District Trustee Lynne Block as its candidate in West Vancouver-Capilano, while the BC NDP is represented by health care professional Sara Eftekhar.
Kirkpatrick said she is confident that her re-entry to the race will not result in a vote split that allows the NDP to win the seat because the party has always had a poor showing in the riding.
“So, even if there is competition between myself and the Conservative candidate, it is highly unlikely that anything would swing over to the NDP here. And I believe that I have the ability to actually attract those NDP voters to me, as well as the Conservatives and Liberals who are feeling just lost right now.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 16, 2024.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken heads to Egypt on Tuesday for his 10th trip to the Middle East since the war in Gaza began nearly a year ago, this one aimed partly at refining a proposal to present to Israel and Hamas for a cease-fire deal and release of hostages.
Unlike in recent mediating missions, America’s top diplomat this time is traveling without optimistic projections from the Biden administration of an expected breakthrough in the troubled negotiations.
Also unlike the earlier missions, Blinken has no public plans to go to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on this trip. The Israeli leader’s fiery public statements — like his declaration that Israel would accept only “total victory” when Blinken was in the region in June — and some other unbudgeable demands have complicated earlier diplomacy.
Blinken is going to Egypt for talks Wednesday with Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and others, in a trip billed as focused both on American-Egyptian relations and Gaza consultations with Egypt.
The tamped-down public approach follows months in which President Joe Biden and his officials publicly talked up an agreement to end the war in Gaza as being just within reach, hoping to build pressure on Netanyahu’s far-right government and Hamas to seal a deal.
The Biden administration now says it is working with fellow mediators Egypt and Qatar to come up with a revised final proposal to try to at least get Israel and Hamas into a six-week cease-fire that would free some of the hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Americans believe public attention on details of the talks now would only hurt that effort.
American, Qatari and Egyptian officials still are consulting “about what that proposal will contain, and …. we’re trying to see that it’s a proposal that can get the parties to an ultimate agreement,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Monday.
The State Department pointed to Egypt’s important role in Gaza peace efforts in announcing last week that the Biden administration planned to give the country its full $1.3 billion in military aid, overriding congressional requirements that the U.S. hold back some of the funding if Egypt fails to show adequate progress on human rights. Blinken told Congress that Egypt has made progress on human rights, including in freeing political prisoners.
Blinken’s trip comes amid the risk of a full-on new front in the Middle East, with Israel threatening increasing military action against the Hezbollah militant organization in Lebanon. Biden envoy Amos Hochstein was in Israel on Monday to try to calm tensions after a stop in Lebanon.
Hezbollah has one of the strongest militaries in the Middle East, and like Hamas and smaller groups in Syria and Iraq it is allied with Iran.
Hezbollah and Israel have exchanged strikes across Israel’s northern border with Lebanon since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas started the war in Gaza. Hezbollah says it will ease those strikes — which have uprooted tens of thousands of civilians on both sides of the border — only when there’s a cease-fire in Gaza.
Hochstein told Netanyahu and other Israeli officials that intensifying the conflict with Hezbollah would not help get Israelis back in their homes, according to a U.S. official. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks, said Hochstein stressed to Netanyahu that he risked sparking a broad and protracted regional conflict if he moved forward with a full-scale war in Lebanon.
Hochstein also underscored to Israeli officials that the Biden administration remained committed to finding a diplomatic solution to the tensions on Israel’s northern border in conjunction with a Gaza deal or on its own, the official said.
Netanyahu told Hochstein that it would “not be possible to return our residents without a fundamental change in the security situation in the north.” The prime minister said Israel “appreciates and respects” U.S. support but “will do what is necessary to maintain its security and return the residents of the north to their homes safely.”
Israel Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, meanwhile, warned in his meeting with Hochstein that “the only way left to ensure the return of Israel’s northern communities to their homes will be via military action,” his office said.
In Gaza, the U.S. says Israel and Hamas have agreed to a deal in principle and that the biggest obstacles now include a disagreement on details of the hostage and prisoner swap and control over a buffer zone on the border between Gaza and Egypt. Netanyahu has demanded in recent weeks that the Israeli military be allowed to keep a presence in the Philadelphi corridor. Egypt and Hamas have rejected that demand.
The Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 killed about 1,200 people. Militants also abducted 250 people and are still holding around 100 hostages. About a third of the remaining hostages are believed to be dead.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 41,000 Palestinians, said Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and militants in its count. The war has caused widespread destruction, displaced a majority of Gaza’s people and created a humanitarian crisis.
Netanyahu says he is working to bring home the hostages. His critics accuse him of slow-rolling a deal because it could bring down his hardline coalition government, which includes members opposed to a truce with the Palestinians.
Asked earlier this month if Netanyahu was doing enough for a cease-fire deal, Biden said, simply, “no.” But he added that he still believed a deal was close.
___
Associated Press writer Aamer Madhani contributed to this report.
