For those in the neighborhood communities, Sugarhouse Casino has been a bitterly divisive topic for years. But how is it actually affecting residents nearby? Artist Mat Tomezsko attempts to answer that question with “Happier and Happier,” a new art exhibition opening today, focusing on SugarHouse Casino and the people who are affected by it — for better or worse.

Tomezsko was inspired by the contrast he saw between anti-casino activists, the ever-lit, unmistakable Sugarhouse building and the Fishtown residents who live around the corner from it. He says he comes at the topic as an artist, not an activist: "I don’t mean to pass judgment. I’m sure there are lots of people who have fun at the casinos. At the same time, they’re an addictive vice, and they can be very destructive. I didn’t set out to antagonize people who like the casinos, or the business. They’re a legitimate business," he says. “My goal is to have the viewer get whatever they bring to it. If people like casinos, they’ll enjoy the paintings. If they don’t like casinos, they’ll see anti-casino paintings. It’s not didactic in any way.”

For decades now, the Benjamin Franklin Parkway has been a home and hangout for homeless folks — in part because it's a big, relatively empty space close to other things; in part because, for decades, various church, school and other groups have been showing up to distribute food.

A few weeks ago, the "feeders" were handed fliers from the Department of Health, inviting them to attend a meeting being held by the city's Health Board to examine possible new regulations on the distribution of food.

A second meeting will be held 5:30 p.m. this Thursday at the Municipal Services Building, Room 1450.

Health Commissioner Donald Schwarz says that the Board, which promulgates health and safety regulations, including some regarding the handling of food, asked the Health Department to speak with those who distribute food on the Parkway and that the Department “is interested in helping to assure that those who are hungry and are getting fed are safer and that those who are feeding are aware of safe procedures.”

But some homeless advocates see this as the latest incarnation of a longtime effort by various city interests to push the homeless off the parkway. Mayor Ed Rendell, former councilman Frank DiCicco, Mayor Street, and Center City District chief Paul Levy are among those who’ve criticized the distribution of food on the Parkway over the years. In 2007, Street administration managing director Loree Jones told a group of students from Mathematics, Civics, and Sciences Charter School to move their food program elsewhere; they did not.

The latest attention to food distribution comes, of course, as the city prepares to celebrate the reopening of the Barnes Foundation on the Parkway, and amid new calls to address the homeless situation there (“As Barnes Rises, Homeless along Parkway get new scrutiny,” was one November article in the Daily News).

But there isn’t total agreement even among homeless advocates about what should and shouldn’t be done.

Brian Jenkins, pastor of Chosen 300, which operates several indoor food programs but also gives out food once a week on the Parkway, says he thinks the Health Board has cause to want to tighten up the rules on homeless feeding programs, "and I can respect that."

Bill Golderer, pastor of Broad Street Ministry, which provides various services for the homeless, told CP he doesn’t see regulations on food distribution as inherently bad.

“Good intentions doesn’t equal good methodology,” he says. “Many of these [homeless] people have serious health histories.”

»  More Some see push against homeless in possible new regulations on Parkway food give-aways

In a 31-to-19 vote, the Pennsylvania Senate today passed House Bill 1950, a piece of drilling legislation that establishes impact fees on shale gas drilling, but at the same time reduces the ability of municipalities to control the activities of drillers. Opponents say the annual fees — which start at $40,000 for unconventional/fracking wells — are among the lowest in the country, and are a pittance compared with the environmental remediation costs (not to mention the cost of importing water). Given that the fees are also tied to the cost of gas, which of course declines as production soars, chances are those fees won't get all that much higher. 

Opponents also say that the inability of municipalities to protect themselves could be devastating.Striking down municipal controls — the patchwork of zoning and community meetings that have become among the biggest challenges and most significant causes of delays the gas industry faces — would be a huge victory for the industry. In short, the industry and its supporters effectively played the tax card to get the legislative changes they needed.

Five Philly Senators were among the "no" votes. Anthony Williams and Vincent Hughes were among the supporters. The House is expected to vote as soon as tonight on the matter.

A weekly series of foulmouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other development and design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at philaphilia.blogspot.com.

Bounded by Arch, Appletree, Eighth Street and the African American Museum of Philadelphia. Pictured: Emptiness.
 
What a crappy lot. Not only is this ocean of asphalt in an unfortunate location, but it's also surrounded by a multitude of ugly buildings. This lot is part of the barrier between Chinatown and the Historic District. When you stand on the block where this pile of tarmac sits, you can't even tell that Chinatown is only a block away.

This piece of shit has always irked me. There's really little to no redeeming qualities of anything you can see from this location. The lot is bookended on the East and West by 1970s trash buildings: the Philadelphia Garment Center (now Driver's License Center) and the African American History Museum of Philadelphia. Both of these buildings are clad in that shitty 1970s facade material that looks like Corduroy pants. Therefore, I dub this lot the Corduroy Building Lot.

»  More Empty Lot of the Week: Corduroy Building Lot

More pain is on the way, Pennsylvania. Today, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett proposed a new budget that includes 30% in cuts to state-funded institutions like Temple and Penn State.

Here is the budget, and here is the speech.

That adds up to big money: a $42 million cut to Temple, and $64 million cut to Penn State. In 2011, Corbett proposed a 50% cut to higher education, which the legislature decreased to 19%: Temple tuition increased by $1,172, Penn State's by $712.

You may not envision Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky as some rootless cosmopolitan. After all, save for his paranoid fixation on the undocumented masses flooding across our nation's southern border, Byko prefers to fix his ire on pressing local matters such as the existence of bicyclists in designated lanes or the scheming atheist plot against the city's Christmas market.

But you, fellow Philadelphians, are wrong: Byko is downright smitten with international affairs.

Last week, he dedicated the allotted real estate to abusing pro-Palestinian activists at Penn, smearing last weekend's Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) conference as a “carnival of hate,” which “immorally equates Israel with white-dominated South Africa, and even Nazi Germany. That's what follows when you ally yourself with those who deny the Holocaust.”

»  More Stu Bykofsky: man of the world, from Thailand to Tel Aviv