Gretchen McKay | (TNS) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

HARPERS FERRY, W. Va. — Nestled along two converging rivers, with the Blue Ridge Mountains’ precipitous cliffs offering a backdrop, Harpers Ferry has long been praised for its rugged natural beauty.

Thomas Jefferson was definitely a fan. After visiting the West Virginia town at the height of fall color in October 1783, he wrote that “the passage of the Patowmac (Potomac) through the Blue Ridge is perhaps one of the most stupendous scenes in Nature…. It is as placid and delightful as that is wild and tremendous….This scene is worth a voyage across the Atlantic.”

The town named for millwright Robert Harper in 1747 soon became one of our third president’s favorite retreats, and today, the mound of Harpers shale on which he stood to survey the water gap below is a popular destination along the Appalachian Trail.

George Washington was more impressed by the small town’s “inexhaustible supply of water,” though for reasons other than today’s passion for tubing, rafting and kayaking on white water. Its gushing natural resources led the former president and wealthy landowner to choose Harpers Ferry for a new national armory in 1796. It turned what had been a somewhat sleepy hamlet into a prosperous industrial village. Between 1801 and 1861, the town produced 600,000 muskets, rifles and pistols for the Army.

Yet this easternmost town in West Virginia didn’t gain national fame until the Civil War.

It was here, in 1859, that abolitionist John Brown and his small group of men seized the armory in hopes of starting an uprising in the South against slavery. The raid itself was unsuccessful. His party was surrounded by federal troops, taking heavy casualties, and Brown was hanged in December 1859 after being convicted of murder, treason and inciting enslaved people to revolt. Many believe that it was the “spark” that ignited the Civil War.

If you love history, it lives on at Harpers Ferry, which became a national historic park in 1963. It focuses not just on John Brown’s raid, and the Civil War — Stonewall Jackson captured more than 12,500 Union troops here, the largest single capture of Federal forces in the entire war — but also shines a light on African American history, industry, transportation and natural heritage.

And if you find joy in hiking, cycling, mountaineering or paddling? You will find lots to do in and around this picturesque town on the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. There also are numerous shops and restaurants, including in nearby Bolivar, if eating, drinking and shopping are high on your to-do list.

Food for thought

History buffs love Harpers Ferry because it played an important role in the Civil War. And walking around charming Lower Town gives the feeling of stepping back in time. One of the most visited historic sites is the only Armory building to escape destruction during the Civil War: John Brown’s Fort, where the abolitionist and several followers barricaded themselves during the final hours of their doomed raid. In 1891, it was dismantled and transported to Chicago for the World’s Fair.

Other buildings reach even further into the past.

When Robert Harper established a ferry across the Potomac River in 1761, it made the town a starting point for settlers moving into the Shenandoah Valley and further west. They included members of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition, who in 1803 made preparations here for their historic exploration of the western portion of the country after the Louisiana Purchase.

In addition to buying supplies and weapons, Meriwether Lewis had craftsmen design a lightweight iron frame for a boat he’d need once he got to shallower water out west. The boat, which was later outfitted with animal hides, was a disaster, sinking right away. But as you learn in the park’s exhibit space on Potomac Street, across the street from the town’s historic Victorian train station, that was the fault of the animal hides — not the ironwork of the town’s (excellent) craftsmen.

Harpers Ferry had become a ghost town by the 1950s and was reconstructed by the Park Service in the ’60s as a “multi-leveled interpretive proving ground.”

Wearing comfortable shoes? National Park Service rangers lead free tours detailing the history of Harpers Ferry National Historical Park. Or, take a self-guided Black heritage walking tour that includes 34 stops.

Interpretive park ranger Amy King leads a free tour of Harpers Ferry’s historic town center. (Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

It starts at Lockwood House, which overlooks what was Harper Cemetery. Originally built in 1848 as housing for the armory paymaster, it transitioned after the Civil War into living quarters for formerly enslaved men and women at Storer College, a historically Black college that operated from 1867 to 1955.

Lower Town also includes an industry museum, a 19th-century “landscape” that will fascinate the kids and both Civil War and Black History museums. And if you climb the rocky set of 44 steps that were carved into the hillside in 1810 behind the museums, you can take in a view of the city below from the stone patio of St. Peter’s Roman Catholic Church.

The great outdoors

West Virginia is famous for its variety of outdoor activities on both land and water, and Harpers Ferry does not disappoint. The Appalachian Trail, one of America’s most famous footpaths, passes through Lower Town, and visitors can trek or bike the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal towpath that runs along the banks of the Potomac River. (You’ll find maps at the Visitors Center.)

If you don’t mind breaking a sweat and have a few hours, a moderately strenuous but rewarding hike follows the Maryland Heights trailhead to Overlook Cliff. The climb is both steep (1,154 feet uphill) and long (a 4.5-mile loop). But when you get to the top, the view of Harpers Ferry below is bucket-list spectacular. And be forewarned: It takes fluids to get to the top and there are no restrooms (or water) on the trail. You’ll have to hold it for hours, especially if you pack a lunch!

The cliffside overlook also can be dangerous if you’re hiking with small children or are wearing the wrong shoes. There’s no fencing to stop anyone from toppling over the rocks — and people can get pretty close to the edge for that perfect Instagram photo.

Also Insta worthy, but on more solid ground: the rock climbers that can frequently be spotted scaling the southern face of a 300-foot vertical cliff leading to Maryland Heights.

Less challenging (but not accessible to those with physical limitations) is the hike up the Stone Steps to St. Peter’s church, past the ruins of St. John’s Episcopal Church, to Jefferson Rock.

You’re not allowed to climb onto the Harpers shale slab that gave Jefferson such pleasure, but you’ll share his terrific view. Continue up the hill a little farther and you’ll hit the Appalachian Trail on your way to Camp Hill, the 32-acre site that once housed Storer College and is now owned by the Park Service.

Harpers Ferry is considered the halfway point of the trail, and during the season weary-looking hikers are a common sight around town and on the towpath across the Potomac. Many stop at the trail’s hikers’ lounge on Washington Street to rest or take a picture on its front porch. So far in 2024, visitor center rep Dave Tarasevich has counted more than 1,240 northbound hikers.

“It’s one of the few places where the trail goes through town, literally,” he said.

Water sports, including fishing, are also popular here. Some people canoe and kayak through October; there’s also white water rafting in season. You also can go horseback riding.

Shop, eat, drink

After all that walking and history learning, you’re going to want to unwind with some good food and drink. While you won’t find big-city gourmet eats, you can get a pretty good meal at several places around town.

Historic Harpers Ferry Lower Town includes a dry goods store. (Gretchen McKay/Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS)

I had a tasty salad made with microfarm hemp hearts, greens, tomatoes and avocado on the patio at The Rabbit Hole, and a pretty good burger at Coach House Bar and Grill.

For coffee, fresh-baked pastries and sandwiches, head to Battle Grounds Bakery & Coffee. If you don’t eat meat, West Virginia’s very first vegan restaurant — Kelley Farm Kitchen in Bolivar — has got you covered with salads, Impossible burgers, hoagies and ramen bowls.

Some places are dog-friendly, including my favorite spot for pizza and a beer — Harpers Ferry Brewing in neighboring Purcellville, Va. Perched on the side of a mountain next to Harpers Ferry Adventure Center, it offers an awesome view along with local craft brews and live music on weekends through November.

Just know that everything in this small town, even the brewery, shutters pretty early. The only life downtown after dark is The Barn of Harpers Ferry, a music venue and bar that offers live music every night Wednesday through Saturday.

Want to take a piece of West Virginia home with you? In boutiques along High Street and Public Way, you’ll find everything from original art and distinctive jewelry crafted by regional hands to old-fashioned candy and confections, antiques and hokey souvenirs.

Getting there

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, is about a 3 1/2-hour drive from Pittsburgh on mostly highway roads (Interstates 76 and 70). If you’d rather be chauffeured, it’s about a six-hour ride on Amtrak, and the train drops you off right in town. A one-way fare runs $65-$220, depending on class. Once there, it’s easy to get around town by foot or bike.

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An avid cyclist? Harpers Ferry is at mile 60.7 on the C&O Canal Towpath.

If you do drive, it costs $20 to enter the park (for three consecutive days) and both metered parking and park parking are extremely limited in Lower Town; on weekends it’s best to park at the Visitors Center at 171 Shoreline Drive and take the free shuttle into town.

Lodging options include bed and breakfasts, campgrounds, a hostel and locally and nationally owned motels. For a guide on where to eat, seasonal events and other attractions, visit wherealmostheavenbegins.com.

©2024 PG Publishing Co. Visit at post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The glamor but also the nasty underbelly of Hollywood have always loomed large in the imagination. You’d think the great destabilization that’s hit the TV and film industry would have led to all kinds of showbiz satires excavating the anxieties and disruptions brought on by streaming and, more recently, artificial intelligence. And yet the latest entry in this genre, HBO’s “The Franchise” — about the absurdity of superhero moviemaking — has nothing to say about any of it. Worse, it’s not even funny.

Perhaps it’s fitting that in such an uninspired era of commercial entertainment, not even a satire of this moment can muster up an original idea.

That got me thinking about better, more thoughtful attempts in the past, which prompted me to revisit “The Comeback.” I haven’t watched the show since it originally aired (on HBO, ironically enough) nearly 20 years ago.

Created by Michael Patrick King (“Sex and the City”) and Lisa Kudrow (who also stars), the series is equal parts comedy and tragedy, following the travails of a middling sitcom actress named Valerie Cherish. After being out of work for a few years, she’s asked to audition for a new series, but it comes with an awkward stipulation: If she’s cast, a reality TV crew will follow her around during the process to capture her “comeback.”

She’s often accompanied by her doting hairdresser (a hilarious Robert Michael Morris). “I pray you get this sitcom, because I’m two years from retiring and I need those health benefits,” he tells her. “They found two more questionable melanomas — don’t cry for me, Argentina!”

“Well, here we are,” she interrupts as they arrive at the network. “I’m sorry, darlin’, just put a pin in that.” Just put a pin in that revelation you have skin cancer, no big deal!

Kudrow was coming off her 10-year run on “Friends” when the first season of “The Comeback” premiered in 2005. It wasn’t meant to be a commentary on the show that made her famous. Even so, it’s a savage behind-the-scenes depiction of sitcom life. A second season aired in 2014, which was a meta turn of events — a comeback for “The Comeback,” a decade later. (Both seasons are available to stream on Max.)

The series portrays an era when pilot season and the network sitcom still were dominant. Watching it now, I expected “The Comeback” to feel dated. And yet the show’s observations are still so on point about Hollywood itself. King and Kudrow capture a searing but also empathetic look at the way show business can make a person deranged. Through it all, Valerie keeps a smile on her face because she has an old-school approach to stardom: Never let them see you sweat (or cry or fall apart).

We’re witnessing the raw footage of Valerie’s reality show as it’s being shot and she’s a wonderful amalgam of ridiculous but also professional.  Her standard greeting upon walking into any room: “Hello, hello, hello!” When she thinks a moment is unflattering and shouldn’t be filmed, she makes a time-out motion while her director (Lauren Silverman) consistently ignores her pleas. This makes Valerie frantic and vulnerable, forever trying to maintain her composure in the face of humiliation. She also has plenty of self-sabotaging tendencies. She’s terrible at reading the room or knowing when to let things go. The more she feels minimized, the worse she gets. She has no chill, and yet you feel deep wells of sympathy for her.

That sympathy only goes so far. “Oh, there’s that girl writer,” she says of the lone woman who’s been added to the sitcom’s writing staff. Valerie can’t be bothered to learn her name because she’s only interested in people who have power.

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Veteran sitcom director James Burrows plays himself, and he is a very funny and grounding presence as he tries (in vain) to give Valerie a reality check. Her mere presence has become an annoyance to her sitcom bosses and Burrows takes her aside. “Why are you so worried about this show?” he asks and then points to the reality crew filming: “That’s your show.” He’s the voice of reason, but it’s a harsh truth that she is not prepared to accept, and the genius of “The Comeback” is that Valerie is usually some combination of wrong and right at any given moment.

Her nemesis is one of the sitcom’s creators, a hateful and obnoxious person known as Paulie G (a terrifying Lance Barber, who more recently played the dad for seven seasons on “Young Sheldon”). In “The Comeback’s” long-belated second season, we learn that Paulie G was a heroin addict when he and Valerie first worked together. Now he’s clean and making a prestige series about his time working on that sitcom. Valerie is cast to play herself, and she takes the role because her consuming hunger for fame means she’ll put up with all manner of insults. You can practically see the rage shooting out like laser beams from Paulie G’s eyes. He is Valerie’s worst nightmare — and she his.

More than a stock villain, Paulie G is a miserable, complicated man. Several years ago, when I interviewed Kudrow, she said the show’s various writers had encountered a similar personality type at some point in their careers.

“When we were interviewing people to write for the show, they all thought they knew who Paulie G was based on, and everyone had a different person in mind.  So there are a lot of those guys out there, that’s what that said to me.”

Despite the many shifts that have reshaped Hollywood in recent years, I suspect this aspect hasn’t changed much at all.

“The Comeback” makes fun of, but also has so much compassion for, an actor’s self-involved absorption and desperation. Valerie is just trying to retain some dignity in a business that’s doing everything to demolish it. Aren’t we all.

Nina Metz is a Tribune critic.

Gretchen McKay | (TNS) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

PITTSBURGH — Most every restaurant worth its salt (and sugar) has a killer dessert on the menu that assures diners will leave the table on a sweet and happy note.

If it’s prepared on site, that often entails employing a professional pastry chef, which can prove expensive for places that are new and trying to keep costs down while getting established.

That was Cory Hughes’ quandary when he opened Fig & Ash on East Ohio Street in Pittsburgh’s North Side Deutschtown neighborhood with his brother-in-law, Alex Feltovich, in 2020.

Hughes — a former Marine who was an executive chef at Google’s Pittsburgh campus and has also cooked in several restaurants around town including Six Penn Kitchen, Eleven Contemporary Kitchen and Spoon — knew he wanted an approachable dessert that would be easy to plate and, perhaps, lend itself to sharing.

But with limited staff, he also knew he couldn’t go super fancy, at least not right out of the gate.

What he and his culinary staff ended up deciding on after considerable deliberation was a confection that most people have loved since they were kids: an upscale version of a thick and gooey chocolate brownie.

Or as he frames it, “We wanted to do something nostalgic.”

Originally, Hughes thought they might be able to create the dessert using the restaurant’s wood-fired oven. When that proved unsuccessful for various reasons, they opted for the next best thing — making it “camping-style” by cooking it in individual cast-iron skillets.

While the first couple of batches were tasty enough, Hughes says the dessert didn’t prove great until he tweaked the batter with a better chocolate — he uses Callebaut dark chocolate pistoles crafted in Belgium — and added a little Kahlua, a liqueur made with rum, sugar and arabica coffee beans.

“It gave it the flavor I was looking for,” he says. “What goes better after dinner than coffee?”

The result is a gooey brownie with a cakey exterior that reminds Hughes of the chocolate batter he used to lick off a spoon when he was a kid.

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Today, the dessert is a Fig & Ash mainstay, a dessert so beloved that on the rare occasion Hughes takes it off the menu, “people complain.”

To keep it fresh, the restaurant occasionally changes up the flavor of local ice cream that goes on top. Currently, it’s being served with Millie’s Homemade Coffee Break, which is made in the company’s Homestead production facility using freshly brewed, sustainably sourced coffee and Pennsylvania sweet cream.

The dessert is further elevated by a sprinkle of Maldon sea salt flakes, which adds a crackle of salty flavor.

“It’s just a really feel-good dessert,” says Hughes of the lovely salty-sweet combo.

Fig & Ash Cast-Iron Kahlua Brownies

PG tested

This recipe is a (very) scaled-down version of the dessert that’s been made at Fig & Ash since its opening in 2020. It requires individual-sized (10-ounce) cast-iron skillets.

Pistoles look like slightly larger, slightly flatter chocolate chips. They melt more quickly and don’t need to be chopped.

1 pound butter, diced

18 ounces chocolate pistoles

8 eggs

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 tablespoon salt

2 cups white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon Kahlua coffee liqueur

Vanilla or coffee ice cream, for topping

Flaky salt for garnish, such as Maldon

Melt butter in saucepan. Once melted, stir in the chocolate pistoles. Let sit until you have a melty pool of chocolate.

In large bowl, whisk eggs completely. Fold in vanilla, salt, sugar, brown sugar and melted chocolate, and whisk until incorporated.

Add in flour and stir until fully incorporated.

Spray 8 individual-sized (10-ounce) cast iron skillets with shortening to prevent sticking.

Divide batter among skillets.

Bake at 350 degrees for 22 minutes. Remove from oven and top with a scoop of vanilla or coffee ice cream and a sprinkle of flaky salt, such as Maldon.

Serve immediately.

Serves 8.

— Cory Hughes, Fig & Ash

©2024 PG Publishing Co. Visit at post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.