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Icepack Illustrated
First Jay Z’s 40/40 Club in Atlantic City announces it’ll stay shuttered for good (they battened down the hatches during Hurricane Sandy and never re-opened since), Now comes word that Sammy Hagar’s AC outlet, Sammy’s Beach Bar is dead in the water. Mr. Can’t Drive 55 can’t come to an agreement with Caesars Hotel and Casino Entertainment group. Word has it that Hagar will look to other area casinos for a partner. You saw how things worked out between Hag and Eddie van Halen, so there’s that.
Brittany Lynn is a drag revolutionary, being that she was the first ever drag Mummer. At the very least, she is the tallest of Philly’s drag doyennes. Tonight, March 14, Lynn will host “Get Sacked” at Sugarhouse Casino starting at 6 pm. Nothing dirty. Philly’s LGBT athletes will join Lynn, her Drag Mafia and the Andre Richards Salon for a night of good clean gown-wearing frolic.
If you like Philly film and think Kickstarter’s a kick, Philadelphia Film Society’s has your cup of tea. PFS took over the Roxy Theater building on Sansom Street (with more than one floor for screening) last year and now the local cine-festival producer has a $40,000 goal for its Kickstarter campaign: a Roxy renovation that includes everything from new seats to paint touch ups. Give until it hurts, cineastes.
Everything is coming up rosy — English rosy with the Philadelphia International Flower Show’s omnipresent Britishness — Brilliant! opened during the weekend at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Along with serving up shepherd’s pie, a fine Beef Wellington and a well’s worth of gin drinks, the Brilliant! black tie gala offered an early look at mini-fields of green topped with pig statues, sensational manicured rose gardens and several Queens — cardboard cutouts of Elizabeth the likes of which are strewn throughout Center City.
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There’s word going around the East Passyunk Ave. community that some of its fathers are considering buying up a part of the block of Broad Street immediately off Passyunk (the old Lubelles, the dollar store, etc.) for a large-scale parking garage. That’ll be perfect for what they hope is the bourgeoning rush of Yunk patrons.
Dr. Noel Zayas and Bruce Welk have been doing their gay-ish “SuperStar” party at Devotion (the old Shampoo space) for the last several weeks. No one has had too much to say about those gigs one way or another. That may very well change come March 23 when the promoting pair host the Shut Up & Dance SuperStar after party at the Ritz Carlton. Bet they don’t go back to Devooo after that.
Some of your old friends in Philly have new jobs that will keep them in town and in our face. Bright-and-boldly red-headed Gigi Lamm, a directress of publicity at the Philadelphia Museum of Art joins Running Press Publishers as their senior publicist next week. She’ll duck out right after the “Great and Mighty Things” outsider exhibition opens. There are also hirings going on at the newly-purchased Prince Music Theater as its owners (Herb Lotman’s 1412 Chestnut Street Corp. team of investors) just brought on one-time Mann Music Center magnate James E. Hines as the Prince’s new director.
The New Festival Headquarters (on the corner of Race Street and Columbus Boulevard) is breaking ground Mon., Feb. 25. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, that’d be the new Live Arts & Philly Fringe HQ on the waterfront that I riffed about exclusively the day after Nick Stuccio signed the lease last summer. Stuccio, Mayor Nutter, ex-Gov. Rendell and Live Arts board members Maria Papadakis and Leonard C. Haas will be there.
It is no fun talking about a place closing. On Valentine’s afternoon, my wife and I were running around the Italian Market when we spied a worker jiggering with the door at the Ninth Street restaurant/BYOB 943. Plants were gone from the front of the window. It seemed like a bad sign. We asked if they were closing and the worker said “yep” before ducking inside. Sometimes I feel like owner/chef Pascual Cancelliere’s Argentinian/Italian eatery never had a chance. It took him a while to open the space after (it finally unveiled in Feb 2011) and there were nasty rumors about monies owed and to whom swirling around the Market. The poor guy had to close up shop last July for heart surgery. Then there’s the fact that 943 was tucked behind the Market’s storied stands. Now, Bebe’s BBQ had the same problem back in the day (and it closed) yet Paesano’s flourishes. Who knows? Good luck Pasquale on your next venture.
Speaking of the Ital Market, Liberties Bellows — the famed accordion sales, repairs and lessons shops — has moved to 614 S. Second St., a larger space with a stage area for squeeze-box only performances. I don’t think the new spot is ready yet so if you need to hear the accordion at its bellow-pumping best soon, check out one of this town’s finest practitioners, Neon and Shy, on Feb 21 (tonight) at the Spiral Bookcase, 112 Cotton St. (thespiralbookcase.com).
To start, there are several stories from Icepack in Print that need immediate follow-up. To go with the fact that Stateside, a.kitchen and Le Bec Fin all lost its chefs one after another in the last several days comes swift news that one has already found its newest kitchen heads. Le Bec promoted its sous chef Steven Eckerd to the exec-chef position with Abigail Dahan as the new pastry chef. Voila.
Then there’s my Michael Singer Rum Bar rumor. Things moved fast from the rumors I heard: the space extensions, the notion that landlord Singer might run his own bar, that several different potential renters from the Mac’s Tavern crew to Jon Myerow would take over the Walnut Street hot spot. Singer found his Rum Bar winner in Myerow, one of his best tenants (Singer owns the 18th Street space that Myerow’s Tria Rittenhouse opened in 2004). The up-n-coming space, Tria Taproom, will serve and lot of pizza and a lot of beer. Myerow’s already got all that cheese at Tria’s other outposts. Might as well bake it up.
Meanwhile, up north in a part of the Piazza at Schmidt’s we believe Bart Blatstein still owns, Brian Nagele’s King’s Oak has a brand new neighbor; Brian Nagel’s Pizza Bar. If only he made pizza bagels. OK you see where this is going.
Here’s a little known fact regarding the murder of famed Navy SEAL, sniper and author Chris Kyle. The U.S. military’s notably most lethal sniper, 38, was killed last Saturday in Texas by a fellow soldier and supposed friend Eddie Ray Routh. Police are still looking at the troubled suspect and his reasons for the slaughter. Lost in the tragedy is the fact that Kyle’s best-selling autobiography, American Sniper, was purchased last year for Bradley Cooper to star in, the first project for Cooper’s Warner Bros.-based production company, 22nd & Indiana. Authors Jason Dean Hall are writing the script with producers Andrew Lazar and Peter Morgan behind Cooper. No word as to whether anything has changed in the wake of the shooting, save — quite sadly — for the ending.
Michael’s Saloon at 12th and Mifflin is white trash. Proudly, I might add. The South Philly dive bar is hosting “White Trash Weekends” with a sonic mix of country & western music and punk rock to go with its $2 brews. Oi.
Monopoly’s newest gamers are obviously pussies. After a month long “Save Your Token” contest thrown by its distribution company Hasbro Gaming, a cat got nominated as the newest Monopoly game piece over the iron. I loved the iron, you fuckers.
This week was supposed to be fun. I was finishing an Ice Cube on the Academy Ball, guessing in my print column how Molly Eichel would be Gorgeous Dan Gross’ successor on the gossip beat at the Daily News (I was right) and writing up something cute about how Philly producers Pop Wansel and Tru got themselves in the middle of that Chris Brown/Frank Ocean fracas in Los Angeles. Then Jef Lee Johnson died. By now you’ve read eulogies (including Pat Rapa’s) about Philly’s most inventive guitarist and his sudden passage. Eulogies worldwide referenced a City Paper cover story on Jef and his immense talents that I wrote. Needless to say his loss leaves a deep hole in this city’s musical schematic to say nothing of the world at large and more specifically his family to whom I send the dearest of condolences. For me, who got to know him a little — we talked at length about his life and work — I can’t stop feeling a little bit emptier. Seriously. He will be missed. Everything else today seems dumbly frivolous.
Anyway about that Chris Brown/Frank Ocean fight at Westlake Studio in L.A., Sigma Sound stalwarts Tru, FLIP Colson and Pop Wansel were at that same studio mixing (according to label sources) the Miley Cyrus album they started here and got caught up in the police proceedings, harassed and hassled according to friends and Tweeters. Come home, gents. Our cops ain’t that bad.
Tonight, is Philadelphia Night on NBC with the finale of Tina Fey’s 30 Rock and the beginning of the Philly-filmed Do No Harm. Do a shot if you hear the words “Upper Darby” or see Broad Street, drunkie.
Sacre bleu: Georges Perrier wants his name back. The French chef who sold Le Bec Fin to Nicolas Fanucci was pleased last year that the new owner wanted to keep Perrier’s flame burning with a namesake basement boite, Chez George. This year, not so much: Word has it that Perrier needs his name back for his own business concerns and enterprises, vite vite. With swift dispatch, the recently re-done room will now be known as Le Bar.
Philly boxing giant Joey Eye is taking over Harrah’s Philadelphia Casino in a big way starting Jan. 26. The cut man/promoter has a huge lightweight bout brewing between Lebanon PA’s Esteban Rodriguez and Victor Vasquez. Eye will fill that bill with seven other matches, starting at 7 p.m. Put up your dukes.
Shake Shack, Danny Meyer’s burger chain (number one at 20th and Sansom is still packed daily), is indeed opening its second Philly link as the cornerstone of Drexel’s Chestnut Square complex along the 3200 block of Chestnut. Students can get the shake on by autumn 2013.
This week in loss is a big hard one. Tattooed love boy/burly chef Matt Levin left Walnut Street’s Square Peg but not the Cohen/Gutin fiefdom as he will still make elegant fare for their Brulee catering concept.
Legendary free rock radio jock/folk singer Michael Tearson was sadly let go from his decade-plus WMGK-FM gig with no goodbye-shift yet thankfully can still be heard on Sirius XM.
Dan Gross. Ah Dan Gross. He jumped from his gossip spot at the Daily News and Philly.com (full disclosure: I work there, too) as well as his head position at the Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia to do God-knows-what. I’ll miss Dan there, it was nice knowing that I had someone solid reporting on the same beat as I.
Jackie Weaver, Jennifer Lawrence, Robert DeNiro, David O. Russell and Philly’s own Bradley Cooper, come on down: Your locally-lensed Silver Linings Playbook just got nominated for Oscars in every major category, save for song. Too many Jack White tunes. Whee, ya’ll.
Underground Arts bartender/manager Jesse Andreozzi, the possessor of one twirly mustache, is have a Prohibition party on Jan. 16. No big deal, you say? You’ve toted out your apple caps and jodhpurs a-whole-bunch-of-times this season, right? Well this happens to be the anniversary of Prohibition’s start, and Andreozzi’s planning a whole new cocktail menu for Underground Arts including one drink called “Another,” his shaken-stirred blend of Dad’s Hat rye, ginger orange peel syrup, club soda and Peychaud’s bitters. Along with comedian N.A. Poe, era-specific band leader Drew Nugent and Cherry Bomb Burlesque being on board for the event, Andreozzi himself will take the UA stage with his flare bartending death defying routine.
Hey Fond on 11th Street, we see that you’re looking to host outdoor seating. And 600 Washington? You want to put in a pool hall. These are just a few of the things that the South Philly licenses peeps had on their docket at the Jan. 8 public con-fab.
- Activism
- Arts
- Arts Events
- Books
- Dance
- First Person Fest
- Last Chance
- Museum
- On the Fringe
- Philly Artists
- The Curator
- Theater
- Visual Art
- Arts News
- Artist Profile
- Arts Preview
- Street Art
- Been There, Done That
- Big Ups
- Comedy
- LOL With It
- Stand-up
- Critical Mass
- DVD
- Events
- Friday Fill-in
- Ice Cubes
- In Memoriam
- Interview
- Just Do It
- Just Opened
- Kaleidoscopic
- LGBTQ
- Art Phag
- Mailbag
- Movies
- Film Fest
- Movie Review
- On set
- Scenester
- screening
- trailer!
- Music
- 10 Track Mind
- Album
- Album Review
- Concert Review
- DJs
- Local Support
- Now Hear This
- One Track Mind
- Philly Bands
- Show
- Somebody Else Was There
- Song
- The Showdown
- concert photos
- jazz
- DJ Nights Blogged
- Night Watch
- Now See This
- Poetic License
- Printed Matter
- Radio
- Shopping
- Coveted
- Fashion
- What We Heart
- TV
- 24
- Idol Hands
- Mad Men
- ProjRun
- True Blood
- Useless Lost Recaps
- Couch Potato
- Shore Trash
- Turned ONN
- TopMod
- Video Games
- Free Online Game
- PSP
- PlayStation 2
- The 1-Upper
- Wii
- Web Junk
- CAGE MATCH
- Free Online Toy
- Weekend Omnibus
- Win
