Football's back. The Steelers open at home Sunday, and for the first regular season since 2006, the head coach isn't Mike Tomlin.

Friday is the 25th anniversary of September 11. Flight 93 came down about 90 minutes from here.

Plus: the city's Airbnb cap got tabled, and a Rainforest Cafe some Pittsburghers remember turns out never to have existed.

Sunday at 1, the Steelers open at home against Atlanta. It's Aaron Rodgers' last Week 1, and the first regular-season game since 2006 without Mike Tomlin on the sideline. It's Mike McCarthy's team now.

Rodgers is retiring after this season, and he isn't pretending Sunday is just another game. "I'll have some butterflies, but that's normal," he said Wednesday. "If you don't have them, you're probably in the wrong business." Atlanta's defensive coordinator, Jeff Ulbrich, was his interim head coach with the Jets two years ago.

All week the team has been driving the six giant Super Bowl rings from the Draft around town, one a day. Today's is at Point State Park. Friday's sits outside Acrisure, where volunteers are packing meals as the team's 9/11 Day of Service. Saturday's is at the Duquesne Incline overlook, and the Steelers are paying everybody's incline fare from noon to 2. On Sunday all six line up outside the stadium next to a 24-foot mural fans painted by number at every stop.

Pitt plays UCF in the same building Saturday at 3:30, a week after beating Miami (Ohio) 59–14. Two games in two days on the North Shore. If you're driving anywhere near it, leave early both days.

Friday is the 25th anniversary of September 11. Flight 93 came down in a field outside Shanksville, about 90 minutes southeast of Pittsburgh, after the passengers and crew fought back. All 40 of them died.

Friday morning at the national memorial, the 40 names are read at the Wall of Names and the Bells of Remembrance ring for them. The 25th observance runs through Sunday. The Tower of Voices, above, holds 40 wind chimes, one for each of them.

Paul Murdoch, who designed the memorial, told WESA this week the trees are the last unfinished piece. About 2,000 went into 40 memorial groves. They struggled in the old mine soil and had to come out, and they still have to be replanted.

Closer to home, Soldiers & Sailors in Oakland has 7,087 dog tags hanging outdoors through Oct. 1, one for each American service member lost in the wars that followed. At Carnegie Mellon, a bagpiper plays at the minute each plane hit, beside a memorial tree for the seven alumni killed that day.

Pittsburgh has somewhere between 2,100 and 2,500 short-term rentals, and nobody keeps an official count. A bill in front of the city would stop new ones in single-family houses unless the owner lives there. Buildings with 20 units or fewer could run two. Bigger buildings, five. Anything operating now stays.

Tuesday the Planning Commission heard from more than 30 people, read 62 letters, and then didn't vote. Chair LaShawn Burton-Faulk wants a legal review first, to make sure the bill actually does what it's supposed to.

Supporters of the bill say some blocks have spent 15 years turning into unregulated hotels. Hosts say they live here too. City Council has the final vote either way, and a separate licensing bill is headed there as well. If your plan for a second house was Airbnb money, wait on this one.

Sen. John Fetterman turned up at the Republican midterm convention in Dallas Wednesday night, on tape. He shot the video in a black hoodie in front of U.S. Steel's Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock, where he used to be mayor.

He called himself "a common-sense Democrat" and pledged to "work with President Trump to fight and defend the steel way of life right here in the Steel Valley." Then he introduced Sen. Dave McCormick.

Rep. Chris Deluzio's review: "Too lazy to do it in person." Fetterman says he isn't switching parties. His seat is up in 2028.

 

Past 7 days. “Was” is last week’s issue.

What we’re seeing

More houses came on than sold, and fewer went under agreement than the week before.

Why you’d care

 

"Quite possibly the most private corner of Pittsburgh. And what's behind that gate might be the most exquisite piece of real estate to hit the market here."

It went on the market today: a 1929 William Boyd Jr. estate at the end of a private cul-de-sac. It's called Hillside. Its 11 acres are remarkably level, which around here is its own kind of luxury.

Inside, the music room is paneled in hand-carved wood that came out of an English castle. Outside, there's a tennis court tucked into the gardens and a lily pond. The Italianate pool pavilion has an infinity pool, an outdoor kitchen, a covered loggia and a fireplace. The north terrace sits under yellow-and-white awnings.

Listed by Andrew Klima, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services.

 

Some Pittsburghers will tell you there used to be a Rainforest Cafe Downtown. Google's AI told Axios the same thing: the Warner Centre, 1997 to 2001. So did ChatGPT. So did Claude.

Axios spent two weeks running it down. Landry's, which owns the chain, says Pittsburgh never had one. Tom Murphy, mayor from 1994 to 2005, doesn't remember one. Neither does anybody at the Downtown Partnership. The Heinz History Center went through old phone books and filed it under the Mandela effect.

What did turn up is a February 2000 Post-Gazette reader survey. Rainforest Cafe was one of the restaurants readers wanted most Downtown.

If you need the fix anyway, Spork Island, a tiki bar, opened Downtown in July in the old August Henry's. It has a volcano that erupts.

 

 

— Tim