Gamble our problems away, Murphy

It seems our own Mayor Tom Murphy is becoming quite the gamblin’ man. He recently won a… It seems our own Mayor Tom Murphy is becoming quite the gamblin’ man. He recently won a football wager with Cleveland Mayor Jane L. Campbell resulting in her wearing a Steelers jersey to work.

On Saturday, the Steelers face the Tennessee Titans and Murphy, along with Allegheny County Chief Executive Jim Roddey, has made a bet with Nashville Mayor Bill Purcell. If the Titans win, Murphy and Roddey will cough up products from Heinz, Del Monte, Primanti Bros. and Penn Pilsner. If the Steelers emerge victorious, Purcell has to surrender a Bible and a Jack Daniels Tipsy cake, both of which are made in Tennessee.

Obviously, after Saturday our region will be one Bible and one boozy cake richer. But if Murphy wants to continue his trend of putting Pittsburgh artifacts up for grabs, maybe in the (next to impossible) event there was a game we thought we’d lose, he could use his gambling habits to better our fair city by putting some negative aspects of Pittsburgh on the gambling block. Mullets

Our mullet count is one of the highest in the nation. If we could trick some hapless adversary into taking a few of these fashion-forward parties off our hands, it would work wonders for our image as a hip place to be. Aging Population

Again aiding our image, let’s boondoggle some city far away to help us lower our average age. Maybe then we could lose the dubious distinction of having the largest elderly population in the state and Rob Rogers can stop using dinosaurs in his “Brewed on Grant” comic in the Post-Gazette. Mellon Arena

It’s round. It’s sort of historic. It’s nifty. It’s also obsolete, in light of all the shiny new facilities. Nobody can seem to agree on what to do with it, from converting it into some kind of space-age housing to running Maglev tracks out of it, so let’s pawn it off on some other city. Slag

With all the post-industrial wasteland being turned to Starbucks and Panera Bread quicker than you can say “venti mocha,” there’s an awful lot of the stuff just lying around. Let’s convince some silly town somewhere that the stuff is great for attracting “knowledge workers.” Combined Sewer Overflow

When snazzy orange and black CSO advisory flags are flying at river establishments like the Carnegie Science Center, you know it’s a bad idea to eat any fish caught from the Mon, or really even dip so much as a toe into the mighty river. Maybe if we got rid of the flags, we could get rid of the nasty pollution. Probably not, though.