Tonight is the Mattress Factory’s annual Urban Garden Party. This year’s theme is Hollywood. It’s Hollywood on the Mon.

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It is the event of the summer season and it’s always scheduled the last Friday of the Three Rivers Arts Festival. All the glitterati, a who’s who of western-pennsylvania’s art community, come out in clusters. And party through the night. The back alley becomes the River Styx separating the domestic from the imports. It’s closed to regular traffic, but open to the rolls, mercedes, and jags that ferry the blue-bloods to the Northshore.

Charon’s fee is variable – green-backs, euros, pounds, glamor, beauty natural or manufactured, celebrity, youth, gender-bending. The young man in the white polo moors the boat while the four drag-queens – pink, leopard, white/blue/red, and black – help the passengers off.

And the little old Italian with his fancy camera and telephoto lens stands on his porch and snaps the show.