Aakanksha Agarwal

1 week ago | pghcitypaper.com | Aakanksha Agarwal

A sugar cookie changed everything in Jasmine Cho’s life. It was simple — its surface covered in smooth white icing, and a portrait of a protestor piped with a delicate tip. She’d been making portrait cookies for a while: figures like Grace Lee Boggs, Yuri Kochiyama, astronauts, authors, changemakers she’d admired from afar. She even hand-delivered a cookie to Hines Ward, the Korean American NFL star celebrated on and off the field.“That was fun,” Cho tells Pittsburgh City Paper.

1 week ago | nextpittsburgh.com | Aakanksha Agarwal

Once, facades like this were common along Second and Third avenues in Downtown Pittsburgh. The red-tiled awning with jade green trim, shaped like a small pagoda, still juts confidently over Third Avenue, wedged between office towers and parking lots. A simple rectangular sign hangs over the sidewalk: Chinese characters in red above blocky English lettering: CHINATOWN INN. For generations of Pittsburghers, Chinatown Inn has been a gateway to a Chinatown that once was.

2 weeks ago | kidsburgh.org | Aakanksha Agarwal

Photo above courtesy of Eastland Alpacas. The days are longer, the skies are bluer and weekend adventures are calling. For families used to the noise and rush of city life, this corner of Pennsylvania Dutch Country offers something unexpected: stillness without boredom, and a vacation that feels refreshingly real. It's the kind of place where you can meet alpacas, ride a vintage train, snack on French pastries, and pick up jars of jam straight from the hands that made them.

2 weeks ago | nextpittsburgh.com | Aakanksha Agarwal

You’re asked to move like a kangaroo. To flow like waves. Nearby, there’s a quiet prompt: What are you carrying today? You can write down a worry — something small or something that’s been gnawing at you — and feed it into a cylindrical, white machine. It devours your words and shreds them into teeny, tiny pieces. It’s a moment of release, one of many in Mental Health: Mind Matters, the Carnegie Science Center’s newest exhibit. Launched March 1 and running through Aug.

2 weeks ago | pghcitypaper.com | Aakanksha Agarwal

The strip of land between Penn Avenue and Fort Duquesne Boulevard has been a no-man’s-land, more concrete cut-through than community hangout. But next year, Pittsburghers might start planning picnics there. Construction began on Arts Landing, a four-acre public space in the Cultural District set to transform Downtown’s Eighth Street block. Arts Landing marks one of the Cultural District’s most ambitious projects in 25 years.