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Andrew Zimmern visits Philadelphia on 'Bizarre Foods,' hangs with Michael Solomonov

Travel Channel Tuesday, November 03, 2015
The Travel Channel show Bizarre Foods visited Philadelphia, and host Andrew Zimmern seemed to have a blast munching on duck hearts and fishing for shad.

Check out air times and clips from the episode here. 

Go vote! (And maybe win $10,000)

Time Tuesday, November 03, 2015
Philadelphians, head to the polls today! And as if participating in democracy wasn't enough, you could win $10,000.

One lucky Philadelphia resident could win a $10,000 payday just for casting a ballot in the mayor’s race.

Non-profit media organization the Philadelphia Citizen announced Thursday that a random voter will be selected on election day to win $10,000 just for voting. The lottery is sponsored by the Pamela and Ajay Raju Foundation, and is meant to encourage voter turnout in a city that has seen very low voter turnout in the last few years. The Mayoral election in 2007 brought out only 29% of eligible voters, the paper said, and only 27% voted in the primary this year.

Noting that voter turnout rates are down across the country—the 2014 federal election brought out only 36% of registered voters—the Citizen calls out Philadelphia in particular for having low civic participation. “It is especially galling here, where this country started and where every single one of us knows a myriad of problems that need solving,” the paper wrote. “Philadelphia suffers from chronic civic participation malaise. We could, as usual, stand back and wring our hands. Instead, we at The Citizen have decided it’s time for action.” Any voter is eligible to win, regardless of which candidate they select. The Citizen will select a specific polling location and a specific time, and the first voter to exit that station at that time will be the winner.
 
Original source: Time
Read the complete story here.

Terry Gross, a Philadelphia institution, gets the NYT Mag profile treatment

New York Times Magazine Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Terry Gross, the master interviewer, has become a beloved figure, and not just in Philadelphia. Her show, WHYY's Fresh Air, is syndicated nationally.

This fall, Gross marks her 40th anniversary hosting ‘‘Fresh Air.’’ At 64, she is ‘‘the most effective and beautiful interviewer of people on the planet,’’ as Marc Maron said recently, while introducing an episode of his podcast, ‘‘WTF,’’ that featured a conversation with Gross. She’s deft on news and subtle on history, sixth-sensey in probing personal biography and expert at examining the intricacies of artistic process. She is acutely attuned to the twin pulls of disclosure and privacy.

‘‘You started writing memoirs before our culture got as confessional as it’s become, before the word ‘oversharing’ was coined,’’ Gross said to the writer Mary Karr last month. ‘‘So has that affected your standards of what is meant to be written about and what is meant to maintain silence about?’’ (‘‘That’s such a smart question,’’ Karr responded. ‘‘Damn it, now I’m going to have to think.’’) Gross says very little about her own life on the air. ‘‘I try not to make it about me,’’ Gross told me. ‘‘I try to use my experiences to help me understand my guests’ experiences, but not to take anything away from them.’’ Early in her career, she realized that remaining somewhat unknown allows ‘‘radio listeners to do what they like to do, which is to create you.’’ She added, ‘‘Whatever you need me to be, I’ll be that.’’

Original source: New York Times Magazine
Read the complete story here. 

Opera Philadelphia announces innovative new festival

Washington Post Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Opera Philadelphia has announced an ambitious new event for 2017.

Over the past few years, Opera Philadelphia has been working on becoming the very model of a modern opera company. It has explored new formats — an opera about Andy Warhol in a warehouse — while continuing its commitment to tradition. It has received grants for innovative outreach projects, such as Hip H’opera in inner-city schools, and a composer-in-residence program. It has been met with critical and public acclaim. And yet, for all of its success, it had a problem — audiences weren’t growing the way that they were supposed to...

Opera Philadelphia announced Tuesday the launch of a new opera festival at the start of its 2017-2018 season. Called O17, the festival will blanket the city with opera — seven events in 12 days, from a traditional opera at the Academy of Music (Barrie Koskie’s production of “The Magic Flute”) to a piece developed by Daniel Bernard Roumain and directed by Bill T. Jones in the Wilma Theater to a double-bill of Monteverdi and a new work by Lembit Beecher, presented in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Selling out? Hardly. Exciting? Yes.

Original source: The Washington Post
Read the complete story here.  

Huge 9th and Washington project moves closer to reality

PlanPhilly Tuesday, October 27, 2015
The Planning Commission has approved rezoning for this potentially transformative development in the heart of the Italian Market. PlanPhilly has the scoop:

The Planning Commission voted on Tuesday to recommend a bill that would allow a 70-unit apartment complex to rise at 9th Street and Washington Avenue in the Italian Market.

The project, a 5-story ditty with 18,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor and two levels of underground parking, was presented to Passyunk Square Civic Associationearlier this year. The developers, Midwood Investment & Development, are planning to hold another meeting with the community group before the bill goes to a committee hearing in City Council, probably sometime next month. The project would replace Anastasio’s, a seafood restaurant that Midwood says it will try to bring back as a tenant in the new building, and the largest vacant lot in the Italian Market.

In recommending the bill, which rezones the lot from CMX-2 to CMX-3, the Planning Commission mulled over the following questions.

Does the project reflect the direction that residents and planners think the neighborhood should be headed while respecting the surrounding environment?

Yes, the Commission reasoned. There seems to be general if not universal consensus that Washington Avenue could handle a bit more residential and commercial density, and there’s even greater consensus that the Italian Market could handle a bit more parking capacity, especially if it’s placed below ground. The project is 5 stories at the southeast corner of 9th Street and Washington Avenue, with commercial space along the ground floor of both frontages. It steps down to some lower townhomes along Darien Street, the eastern boundary of the site, to fit in with the existing homes on the other side of that street.

Original source: PlanPhilly
Read the complete story here. 

Marijuana decriminalization, a year in

Daily News Tuesday, October 27, 2015
It's been a year since Philadelphia decriminalized small amounts of marijuana. How's it going? And could further steps towards legality be in the offing under a new mayor?
 
Philly blunt: Possessing a small amount of marijuana or smoking some in public has been decriminalized here for exactly one year today, and the city hasn't gone up in smoke.

In fact, since decriminalization took effect, police have cited 73 percent fewer people than they arrested for possessing weed during the same time period in the year prior to decriminalization.

And if mayoral candidate Jim Kenney has his way, citations for marijuana users may become a thing of the past, too.

"I'm not interested in issuing citations, either. We'll get to that conversation at the appropriate time next year," Kenney told the Daily News. "As time goes on, I don't know if there's going to be a need for any kind of punishment."

As a councilman, Kenney championed the decriminalization bill. He said he did so because Philadelphia was the only municipality in the state still physically arresting people for possessing a small amount of weed and the city was arresting black pot smokers at five times the rate of white ones.

"I think it's pretty hypocritical in a state that licenses, sells and taxes alcohol - that actually runs alcohol-dispensing stores - to say that marijuana rises to the level of an opiate," Kenney said. "It's not necessary, productive or good for the community."

Original source: Daily News
Read the complete story here. 

The S.S. United States moves closer to demolition

The New York Times Tuesday, October 13, 2015
At one point, the future looked bright for this massive ship -- currently docked in Philadelphia -- but now its supporters are scrambling to save it.

A Titanic-sized supership that once ferried presidents, Hollywood royalty, actual royalty and even the Mona Lisa has a place in the history books as the fastest oceanliner in the world. The owners are now racing to avoid having the ship, the S.S. United States, relegated to the junk heap.

A preservationist group, the S.S. United States Conservancy, saved the vessel from being scrapped a few years ago. Its members are working with a developer to give the mothballed vessel a new life as a stationary waterfront real-estate development in New York City, the ship’s home port in her heyday.

Their big dreams, however, now face a financial crisis: Short of money, the conservancy in recent days formally authorized a ship broker to explore the potential sale to a recycler. In other words, the preservationists might have to scrap their vessel...

The S.S. United States left service in the late 1960s. Today she is docked in Philadelphia, stripped of her interiors and rusting in the Delaware River across the street from an Ikea store...

The conservancy has explored many options for repurposing the ship. It discussed a hotel-and-event-space proposal in Miami, a mixed-use development and museum complex in Philadelphia, and redevelopment plans in Boston, Baltimore and Florida’s Port Canaveral. With a major cruise line, the conservancy explored the prospect of returning the ship to oceangoing service.

The preservationists even weighed the possibility, Ms. Gibbs said, of using the ship as an artificial reef — in other words, sinking it — in tandem with a museum and visitor’s center. But, she said, “I have spent over a decade trying to save the ship, not preside over her demolition.”

In recent days, as the board considered its dwindling finances, Hurricane Joaquin was threatening the East Coast, forcing the conservancy to take precautions to make sure their ship stayed safe. “A hurricane struck me as a perfect metaphor for what we were confronting,” Ms. Gibbs said.

Original source: The New York Times
Read the complete story here. 

Philadelphia leads the way in reduced soda consumption, a huge public health boon

The New York Times Tuesday, October 13, 2015
Soda consumption is down nationwide, and Philadelphia is at the forefront of this massive change. The New York Times chronicles "The Decline of 'Big Soda.'"

Five years ago, Mayor Michael A. Nutter proposed a tax on soda in Philadelphia, and the industry rose up to beat it back...
It’s a familiar story. Soda taxes have also flopped in New York State and San Francisco. So far, only superliberal Berkeley, Calif., has succeeded in adopting such a measure over industry objections.

The obvious lesson from Philadelphia is that the soda industry is winning the policy battles over the future of its product. But the bigger picture is that soda companies are losing the war. Original source: The New York Times
Read the complete story here. 
 

The City Paper is closing

City Paper, Philly.com Thursday, October 08, 2015
With little notice and quite a bit of controversy, the City Paper was bought and shut down by Broad Street Media. The final issue came out this week.

You may have read this afternoon that Philadelphia City Paper had been sold and would cease publication as of Thursday, Oct. 8. 

This came as a surprise to us, too. We first heard about it via Broad Street Media’s press release announcing that they’d acquired the intellectual rights to City Paper (in other words they bought the name and the URL.) That was brought to our attention when people from other newspapers started calling us for comment or friends started texting their condolences, the result of a very unfortunate misunderstanding between our current owners and our soon-to-be-owners about the timing of the announcement.

We’re all obviously really sad. We’re intensely proud of the work we’ve done this past year — not to mention the past three decades...

So. At the moment, we're the only people here, playing maudlin songs on the jukebox. Somebody just said, "It might be really great to do a post chronicling what it's like when an entire staff gets laid off!" Someone else replied, "Dude, the clicks don't count anymore."

They don't, we guess. We'd like to think, though, that the clicks were never the most important thing. We did our best to do good journalism, to give a voice to the people and stories of Philadelphia that sometimes get overlooked.

From Philly.com: 

"It's heartbreaking," said Daniel Denvir, a multiple-award winner who covered criminal justice and public education for City Paper until this past spring. "Alt-weeklies everywhere are in a death spiral. And that death spiral has now consumed the City Paper, the last legit alt-weekly standing in the city. It leaves an enormous hole in the news ecosystem."

Fortunately, and effort is in the works to salvage the archives. From the City Paper:

We're happy to be able to update this post with the news that, while City Paper will not be publishing any new stuff after the 8th, Darwin Oordt, the CEO of Broad Street Media, has said he is committed to finding a "good steward" to keep our 35+ years of archives public and available — possibly Temple's Urban Archives, which has expressed an interest in helping with the project.

(For more on efforts to save the archives, check out this post from the Columbia Journalism Review.)

Speaking as someone who came up in the alt-weekly world and occasionally contributed to the City Paper, you will be sorely missed. 

Original source: City Paper, Philly.com

 

Gawker claims Pope weekend led to 'the nicest Philly has ever been'

Gawker Tuesday, October 06, 2015
Gawker also got into the act of chronically the strange state of Philly over the course of the pope's visit.

This time around, many Philadelphians left town in the days before Pope Francis’s arrival, hoping to avoid what was lazily termed “pope-ocalypse” (or “pope-a-geddon”) altogether. Others vowed not to leave their homes until the madness passed—a staycation with a holy purpose, amen. A braver group of Philadelphians planned to venture out into the streets to check out the scene. What would Center City hold for these urban adventurers? Faith-based stampedes, perhaps. Overturned cars, alight with gasoline, testosterone, and the fire of the holy spirit—maybe. Lines, long lines, lines for everything, lines, lines, lines? Almost certainly.

The city was dead.

Wandering through the car-less and largely people-less Old and Center Cities in the early afternoon on Saturday, after Pope Francis celebrated mass at the Basilica of Saints Peter and Paul, felt like a pleasant nightmare. Sure, in this post-apocalyptic world everyone I’d ever known had died, leaving me alone in search of the head of the Catholic Church, but the weather was pleasant and boy was it nice to stroll through the streets unbothered. Time enough at last.

It was a great weekend to be in Philadelphia, truly, unless you were a member of the service industry.

Original source: Gawker
Read the complete story here. 

Slate lauds Philly's car-free streets moment

Slate Tuesday, October 06, 2015
Flying Kite contributor Jake Blumgart tells Slate readers about the magical Open Streets moment Philly experienced during the pope's visit. And he thinks other cities should try it, too. 

It was wonderfully, serenely, even disarmingly quiet in downtown Philadelphia this past weekend. At the order of the U.S. Secret Service, 4.7 square miles were cleared of automobiles for two days as Pope Francis, his entourage, and his devotees descended upon the city. While the expected massive crowds never quite materialized, the streets filled with local children playing, cyclists lazily pedaling about, and clusters of pilgrims wandering between events—all without a car in sight...
 
The fact that cities are nicer when cars aren’t zipping around is obvious once it’s been experienced. In recent years many metropolises across the world—from New York to Jakarta, Indonesia, to Bogotá, Colombia—have been experimenting with contained and short-lived “open streets” days, where automobiles are banned and the city blocks returned to the people. What made Philadelphia’s experiment stand out is that its car-free moment was so extensive and so incidental. Most cities that actually plan for open streets only select a small area for the festivities, but the experience of a huge swathe of Philadelphia being reclaimed created a lot of converts to the cause. The fledgling group Open Streets Philly started a Change.org petition earlier this week that quickly exceeded its goal of 2,500 signatories. The buzz around Philadelphia’s carless weekend may not have convinced anyone that city centers need to be permanently car-free, but it certainly demonstrated a hunger for occasionally experiencing a city without the danger and distraction of automobiles. It’s a hunger more cities should sate.

Original source: Slate
Read the complete story here. 

PlanPhilly takes a close look at the fate of our beloved Toynbee Tiles

PlanPhilly Tuesday, October 06, 2015
The Toynbee Tiles -- linoleum text squares embedded in pavement across the city -- are a Philadelphia institution, and they're in danger of disappearing.

The city’s paving agreements stipulate that paving contractors must halt resurfacing and notify a Streets engineer if they come across a Toynbee Tile, those strange mosaic messages embedded into the pavement across Philadelphia.

The Tiles are at once part of our local lore and art known the world over, the product of a South Philly man with a tenuous grip on reality and a tremendous amount of creativity. The tiles have inspired imitators and thieves alike, not to mention numerous news pieces and one award-winning documentary. And with all signs suggesting the mysterious Tiler has left the city for good, the tiles are becoming ever more rare and in danger of extinction in their native habitat, Philadelphia.

The Streets Department wants to save a few for posterity, before their slow resurfacing process destroys the few left remaining that have managed to survive years of city winters and SEPTA buses. For Tonybee fans, that’s reason for hope.

Want to know more about the Toynbee Tiles? Check out the awesome, award-winning 2011 documentary Resurrect Dead. Here's an interview Flying Kite did with director Jon Foy.

Original source: PlanPhilly
Read the complete story here. 

Pope visit creates car-free utopia on Philly streets

Philadelphia Inquirer Tuesday, September 29, 2015
What a weekend! The pope's visit transformed Philadelphia, giving pedestrians and bikers the run of the town. This editor spent three days tooling around the open streets, luxuriating in the car-free experience -- and even cruising on the Ben Franklin Bridge.

The Inquirer's Inga Saffron raved about the experiment, and encouraged the city to incorporate the lessons learned into everyday life.

When Pope Francis spoke about joy this weekend, he probably wasn't thinking about the ecstasy that comes from being able to stroll down the center of Walnut Street without a car at your back. Or the rapture of skateboarding the wrong way on Pine Street. Or the bliss of biking 20 abreast on Broad Street. Or the pure, giddy fun of playing touch football in front of the Convention Center on Arch Street.

The unprecedented shutdown of the five-square-mile heart of Philadelphia was driven by the need for security (or rather, the perceived need for security), but it inadvertently created the kind of car-free city that urbanists dare imagine only in their wildest dreams. The virtual absence of vehicles in the sprawling secure zone, from Girard to Lombard, was a revelation. Instead of locking us in, it turned out that the much-maligned traffic box liberated us from the long tyranny of the car.
Philadelphia has always claimed to be a walkable city, but this weekend we saw walkability redefined...

While no one would advocate making the traffic box a permanent feature of the city, this carless weekend has opened our eyes to the possibilities of closing streets and limiting traffic. We've seen that closing Center City streets, far from paralyzing the town, can make it a more joyful place.

Original source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
Read the complete story here. 
 

Pope Ride draws 3,000 cyclists

Philadelphia Magazine Tuesday, September 29, 2015
The Pope Ride took advantage of car-free streets and drew thousands of cyclists -- from weekend warriors in spandex to kids in cargo bikes. Philadelphia Magazine compiled their favorite social media images from the event.

Original source: Philadelphia Magazine
Read the complete coverage here. 

Fall means exciting new restaurants across the city

Philadelphia Magazine Tuesday, September 29, 2015
As the fall leaves turn, long-anticipated restaurants are opening across the city. Are there any future neighborhood institutions in the bunch? Any trends worth tracking? Philadelphia Magazine runs down almost a dozen of the spots they're most excited for.

Restaurant Neuf
943 South 9th Street, Bella Vista
Joncarl Lachman of NOORD is opening his second restaurant, this one with a bar and the French influenced flavors of Northern Africa. Lachman is especially excited about the bouillabaisse which will be a dynamic experience with the broth presented first and the fish added. The chef, who has spent lots of time researching in North African neighborhoods of Paris is also looking forward to the braised goat leg with sweet potatoes, dried apricots, roasted vegetables, crushed mixed nuts and spiced tomato broth....The bar will be the focus after 10 pm with a menu of bar snacks and a Cornell especially wants people to try VP Chartreuse. The aged chartreuse will be available for $20 during happy hour. Half-carafes are another way to enjoy time at the bar. A bar specific menu will be offered after 10 pm as the lighting gets darker and the music is turned up.
...

Buckminster’s
1200 South 21st Street, Point Breeze
The team behind Café Lift, Prohibition Taproom, Bufad and Kensington Quarters is adding another name to the list with Buckminster’s—a French-Asian concept going into the space at 21st and Federal in Point Breeze. And the chef they’ve got on board? Rob Marzinsky, who did his time at Pub & Kitchen and Fitler Dining Room before taking off to wander around Asia.
Now that he’s back, he’s using the food he ate there as an inspiration for the menu at Buckminster’s. And as a bonus, he’ll be working with Kensington Quarters butcher Heather Thomason, so we know he’ll be getting his hands on some good meats to start things off.

Original source: Philadelphia Magazine
Read the complete list here. 
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