Correspondent photo / Ben Davis ... Social influencer Johnny Pittsburgh gifted a painting of the Union Pacific Big Boy 4014 to the city of Struthers, which hosted a whistle-stop event July 12. From left are Struthers Mayor Catherine Cercone Miller, police Chief Tim Roddy and Safety Director Anthony Lariccia.

STRUTHERS — Social media influencer and artist Johnny Pittsburgh gifted a painting of the Union Pacific Big Boy 4014 to the city of Struthers.

Johnny was invited by Struthers police Chief Tim Roddy to attend the Big Boy whistle-stop event July 12.

“He just posts things about the city of Pittsburgh and the surrounding area … and I love Pittsburgh so I started following him years ago,” Roddy said. “Seeing that the train wasn’t going to Pittsburgh … I thought, ‘let me see if he wants to come up here.’

The painting of the Big Boy was meant to be a present to Struthers as a thank you from Johnny Pittsburgh for inviting him.

“The painting was something I just thought of as a gesture to give back for the invite,” Johnny said. “I do a lot of creative things, so I figured that was a way to kind of give back to the city for having me as a guest.”

Johnny has been interested in creative arts since he was young, with his online presence being a recent development.

“I’ve been a creator forever. So, my whole life I’ve been into art, music and painting,” Johnny said. “The Johnny Pittsburgh sort of persona, if you will, is fairly new, I’d say about three years.”

Much of Johnny’s content is “hyper local” as he put it, focusing on areas in and around Pittsburgh, whether it be landmarks or the city’s environment

“Most of it is paintings of Pittsburgh, whether it’s the scenery or, you know, Art Rooney, or Steelers, or some locations around town,” Johnny said.

What became the online persona of Johnny Pittsburgh comes from an idea that Johnny himself had 10 years ago, when he created an online forum to share stuff about Pittsburgh on the internet.

“Ten years ago, I started a page called Pittsburgh for Life, and it was really … a conduit to bring people together online. Like kind of a new media to just share stories, and share history, sports, arts, food, you name it. Everything going on in Pittsburgh,” Johnny said. “I decided about three to four years ago for me personally to be the face of the page.”

Struthers Mayor Catherine Cercone-Miller explained that Johnny Pittsburgh was invited to the Big Boy event as a way to promote it to more people, and to promote the city overall.

“We were trying to think of anything that we can bring here just to add into the mix,” Miller said. “Obviously everyone’s into TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, and Chief Roddy follows Johnny Pittsburgh.”

“We got him on the roof so he could do a live feed from there, and he presented us with this beautiful painting, Miller said.

This is not the first time that Struthers has reached out to an influencer to promote the city. Miller said they gave Cleveland-based influencer Sir Yacht, real name Joey Kinsley, a tour of Struthers to promote it online.

“We took Sir Yacht all around Struthers in an hour. Got him T-shirts, we took him to Donavito’s, to Selah, we walked down along the river,” Miller said. “We gave him a really quick tour in like an hour and a half, and he posted this whole video on Facebook, and TikTok.”

The Big Boy painting is displayed in the mayor’s office. Miller said that it will be moved somewhere else in city hall to so the public can see it.