If you visited Pittsburgh’s South Side Flats neighborhood late on a Friday or Saturday this past summer, you probably saw them – the checkpoints, metal detectors, police officers, security guards and street vendors all along a stretch of East Carson Street.
The South Side Street Fest, as it was called, was a public safety initiative in the neighborhood’s main business corridor. From South 12th to South 18th streets, on Friday and Saturday nights between 10 p.m. to 2 a.m., officials shut down East Carson Street to cars and allowed open-container drinking within the cordoned-off perimeter. Anyone entering the area was required to show ID proving they were at least 21 years old, and pass through a metal detector. The event ran each weekend from mid-June through early September.
Local South Side leaders who helped organize the program say the goal was to promote safety, after summers in which shootings and other disruptions gave the area the wrong kind of headlines. At the same time, organizers hoped to draw people back to the neighborhood…