Our weeklong Christmas party's coming to a close ... with a little spice.
All day today until 6 p.m., our family will be welcoming our extended family -- that's you! -- to our Downtown HQ/shop, 224 Fifth Avenue, to celebrate the season. Dali and I'll be here until I've got to head over to Acrisure Stadium for kickoff, with the doors wide open to meet your shopping needs for the Pittsburgh sports fan in your life.
Longtime reader Willy Peppers made his annual stop our way, bearing much original cooked fare, not least of which was Slovenian kolbasi, a Romanian dish and two pizzas shaped like Christmas trees. All adorned with Willy's one-of-a-kind homemade sauces that included a spicy mustard created by Diane Johnston, wife of the living legend Eddie Johnston:
DALI KOVACEVIC / DKPS
Excessively hungry staffer happy to see Willy Peppers, yesterday, 224 Fifth Avenue, Downtown.
DEJAN KOVACEVIC / DKPS
Some of the overwhelming arsenal deployed, yesterday, 224 Fifth Avenue, Downtown.
And yeah, one of those spices was custom-made for Corey Crisan. I don't even know what that's about, but we were instructed to pass it along.
Never forgetting that almost half our audience lives well outside Western Pennsylvania, you can also shop with us by ordering online: We have a state-of-the-art e-shop related to both DK Pittsburgh Sports and The Ramon Foster Show. That means T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, tumblers, stickers, gift cards in denominations from $30-$100. (These, obviously, wouldn't arrive in time for Christmas!)
Lastly but definitely not least, gift subscriptions to the app/site. (These, obviously, would arrive instantly!) The content's open to all now, but this is the only way to get the 100% ad-free experience, the commenting access, the Live Qs, the access to meetups with our reporters and a ton more.
But if you're in the area, come see us!
INSIDE THE WORKS
• The next full Site Stuff will be our year-ender next Saturday before I fly out to Seattle.
• We've hired a full-time reporter who'll start with us in late February or early March. Not ready to detail that yet, but this individual will cover Pitt athletics beginning with spring football, then do a lot of Pirates and, really, a lot of everything.
• With the addition of the reporter covering Pitt/Pirates, Corey will move into an even more prominent role in covering the Steelers. Which is awesome, because he's earned it.
• Since Corey's all done with Pitt football, he'll be out on the road with me in Baltimore for the season finale. I'll do Seattle solo on New Year's Eve, because I'm not nearly mean enough to drag him all the way out there when he could be home for that holiday.
• Reminding everyone before the complaints come: We've always skipped ALL weekly features and ALL Live Qs on the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, and this won't be an exception. Only fair to the staff.
• Everyone still loving being ad-free? If you're not there yet, it's only for paying subscribers. If you aren't subscribed yet or if your subscription's expired: this is our new subscribe page. Make sure you're logged in, tap on the link, and thumb down to the bottom for the SUBSCRIBE button to buy/renew at the monthly or annual level. We also have pages for student subscriptions and senior subscriptions.
BACK TO BUSINESS
• Our page-view numbers for the past week were 947,064, with an all-time record 53,702 unique users over the most recent full seven-day span, Dec. 15-21. Our five most-read original pieces was led by the most-hit piece we've ever had since helping to create the BoomPress platform:
1. My Steelers column from Indianapolis: 50,256
2. Taylor Haase's all-Penguins Friday Insider: 14,774
3. Chris Halicke's Chalk Talk on offensive detail: 14,271
4. My Penguins column on Valtteri Puustinen: 11,519
5. Corey Crisan's coverage of the QB mess: 11,084
As a fun aside, that record-setting number above is slightly more than DOUBLE the most-visited thing I ever had at a newspaper, meaning either the Post-Gazette or the Trib. I vividly recall having only once topped 24K, and that was at the Trib, also for a Steelers column.
• On the multimedia front, our podcast downloads for the past week were 104,747, and our YouTube video views for the past week were 172,256.
• Our company social media accounts are at 51,809 followers on X, 40,324 on Facebook, 27,318 on YouTube, 14,941 on Instagram ... and already 3,374 on the new Threads!
• We make mistakes. If you see one, email: Typos@DKPittsburghSports.com
• We're often asked about our HQ/shop merch being available online, and yes, it's right here.
• Anything you need, email: Help@DKPittsburghSports.com
