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Guess who's not too excited about the opening of Matt Damon's Promised Land? That would be the natural gas industry.
The Marcellus Shale Coalition is running in-theater and social media damage-control efforts — or, as a press release says, responding "to the work of fiction with real facts and responsible conversation" — including the 15-second ad embedded below. The ad (perhaps the only thing viewers will see in the theater that's less intriguing than the pre-movie FBI warning) will run during during movie previews. The Coalition, which always runs promoted tweets, will be stepping that up as it attempts to drive traffic to the LearnAboutShale.org website. They've also collected critical reviews of the movie and the science behind it, which you can find here.
Last year, City Paper wrote about how the most significant byproduct of the registration of sex offenders in Pennsylvania may not be an improvement in public safety, but rather the marginalization of ex-offenders attempting to reintegrate into society, find housing and get back to work. Now, a state legislator wants repeat drug offenders to register as well.
In a memo to fellow legislators Republican state Sen. Kim Ward of Westmoreland County explained: "The bill I propose would have any individual convicted of a third or subsequent offense [on charges of manufacture, delivery or possession with intent to manufacture or deliver a controlled substance] … would have to register their name and address with the State Police under a newly established drug offender registry. Offenders would remain on the list for a period of ten years. The new registry would be modeled after Megan’s Law."
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
1001 Locust St. -- Here's a Dead-Asser that illustrates how much things have changed in good ol' Philadelphia in the last 15 years. When this crazy motherfucker was proposed, it was considered a MAJOR building that would change the skyline forever. The largest building proposal for the city in a decade and the tallest construction project in Washington Square West in seven decades. Nowadays, this proposal would fall into the shuffle of approximately 130 projects now in some stage of development in the city.
In the 1990s, Jefferson was having some hurt feelings. UPenn's School of Medicine was kicking their asses in cancer research. Though Jeff just finished the 11-story Bluemle Building for the purposes of research, they only received one quarter of the National Institutes of Health grants Penn was getting. In 1996, self-made gazillionaire Sidney Kimmel donated $10 million for the purposes of getting some more cancer researching going. In response, Jeff re-named their cancer research facility the Kimmel Cancer Center.
So yesterday, way back in 2012, we pointed out that Ferko, the Mummers string band that opted for the theme "Bringing Back Those Minstrel Days," seemed poised to walk a precarious line between the lovably, and therefore pardonably, un-PC-ness of old-school Philly and something that might be downright offensive. Ferko assured us they were not going to cross that line by doing anything like, say, appearing in blackface, which has been banned from the parade for years.
That didn't, however, stop them from carrying signs bearing enormous leering faces, which appear to be copies of the home page image from a website called black-face.com. So, to recap, wearing blackface is bad. Representing blackface on signage is A-OK.
Check out the Flickr page of Jen J. Walker (aka LucindaLunacy) for the larger version of this photo, and more shots of this and other Mummer moments.
View galleryAround late September, property owners along Bodine and Cadwallader streets in Kensington started getting notices in the mail: The Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority wanted to take their property, and it would be setting the price. Maybe it was because it was so unbelievable — the idea that the city could just seize their property, including garages rented to businesses, side yards adjacent to their homes, a garage with an apartment above that's rented, and others — that the property owners didn't take the correspondence too seriously at first. But over the past week — just in time for Christmas — they got news that it was done. "On December 18, 2012, the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority acquired title to the referenced property," the letters read, distributed by mail and attached in manila envelopes to signposts all along the square block.
Now, Meletios Anthanasiadis, owner of El Greco Pizza & Luncheonette and landlord of about 20 properties in the area, is livid that some seven properties in his name are all being taken from him. The properties in question are garages that he says are currently rented to tenants, who use the garages and adjacent parking lots for businesses including an auto body shop and a small antique car restoration business. "They're displacing a small business," he says. "They're costing people their jobs."
"They're stealing [the properties]. They're taking my property, my tax dollars, and giving it to someone else."
Anthanasiadis had purchased the properties over the past 12 years or so with the plan to rent them out until he could develop on them himself. He says it was his only retirement plan, after running pizza shops ever since he dropped out of school before 10th grade. He feels that he invested in the neighborhood when few others wanted to — and now someone else will reap the profits. For one example, he points to 1529 N. Cadwallader St., for which he says the city has offered him $43,000. "I paid $55,000 in 2004, and then I had to make improvements, I had to pay interest. But that's the only offer I received from the city, and they made the offer after they took possession over my property. They become gods [in the way they hand down decisions]."
Image from greatwhatsit.com
If there's one thing you can say about the Mummers in recent years, it's that they seem to have perfected a balance of doing what would be, almost anywhere else, politically incorrect, and getting away with it in style. It's something about being good natured, and a little drunk, and loaded up with sequins that makes it seem, somehow, sort of OK to dress as a generically "Oriental" emperor, or tribally nonspecific "Indian."
Mayor Nutter may think the NRA's suggestion of bringing more guns into schools is a "dumbass" notion, but that might not stop the idea from gaining traction in Harrisburg. Newly elected state Rep. Gregory Lucas (R- Crawford and Erie counties) has circulated a memorandum detailing his plans to clear the way for teachers and other trained school staffers to carry guns in school.
In the document, he explains, "As a new legislator from Northwestern Pennsylvania, I believe I bring a unique perspective to questions about these shootings. My home town, Edinboro, saw something similar back in 1998. A student brought a gun to a school dance. Three people were shot. One of them, a friend of mine, died of his wounds. What prevented more deaths on this horrible occasion? An armed private citizen who, using his own gun, stopped the shooter."
He added: "I will be introducing legislation to allow school personnel to carry a gun to school if they have been licensed to carry a concealed firearm AND have a current and valid certification in the use and handling of firearms."
Lucas told a local reporter "I think the NRA is right on track," though he explained, "I'm a gun person."
The "Drop the Ball NYE Event" at 2424 Studios' Skybox in Fishtown was supposed to include five hours of open bar, "2,000+ of the tri-state's elite nightlife crowd," a champagne toast, live ball dropping — and, neighbors feared, a drunken mess of non-locals cramming into a space that they argue could barely accommodate 1,000 party-goers. Fishtowners were none too pleased with the plan by a promoter called One Up Events. In fact, after a slew of emails to City Paper, which was among the sponsors of the event, to district Councilman Mark Squilla and to the 26th Police District, they got the event canceled, according to 2424 Studios co-owner Leonidas Addimando.
Addimando didn't want to comment to CP about the event, his decision to cancel it, the capacity of the space or whether the property owner should have had a Special Assembly and Occupancy License to host such events. However, in an email to Squilla, the 26th and Christopher Sawyer, a neighbor who complained about the event, Addimando wrote: "After having the details of this NYE event brought to my attention late last week and early this week, my partners and I have canceled the event's booking and thus there will be no such party in our building. … When this event was booked the true intentions of the events sponsor's were not disclosed to us. Had they been, we as owners would have never allowed them to book the 'Skybox.'"
We reached out to a couple promoters on what happened and whether this event will be moved at the llast minute. Apologies to the tri-state elite nightlife crowd for any disappointment.
UPDATE: Good news, tri-state elite nightlife crowd! The event has been moved to "Philly's newest super club, Statuz" at 600 Spring Garden St. Event promoter Rob Wright describes this as his decision. "This event has not been canceled but it has been relocated to a new venue with better parking and access to cabs and public transportation. This was a hard decision but became easy to make given all of the requests we were getting from ticket buyers for better transportation options."
A weekly series of foul-mouthed investigations into empty lots, dead-ass proposals and other design phenomena in Philadelphia. Find more stories like this at Philaphilia.blogspot.com.
North of the entire 3000 and 3100 blocks of John F. Kennedy Boulevard
It just keeps on going!!
This lot sure is a bastard. A Long Bastard. West Philly's east-west blocks are already longer than Center City's, and this lot is as long as two West Philly blocks. That's long!! For 59 years, this parking lot has dirtied up an already dirty spot that was empty before it was even a parking lot. What a piece of dung.
In the early 19th century, the site of this block would have been described as a small part of the massive estate of the Powel family, a wealthy Welsh family that had their hands in everything, especially real estate. The parcel of land that this lot stands on was so large that it was becoming a town upon itself called Powelton. The neighborhood to the northwest still bears this name.
When I lived in Texas, I spent nearly every evening having beers with my neighbor. Unsurprisingly, he was named Bubba. One day, while he and I were discussing how a local tweaker had come to begin driving a very expensive luxury vehicle he mentioned that he had recently bought a gun he described as a Russian sniper rifle.
I asked why he thought he needed a gun like that. He described his purchase as an investment.
Barack Obama had recently been elected president. Rather than let your stereotypes fill in the rest of this anecdote, I’ll just say that Bubba planned on selling the rifle after a gun ban went into effect. That ban never came.
All of this leads me to say this: Though I acknowledge that they might be accurate, there is good reason to be skeptical of all the stories in which reporters go interview gun shop owners, only to be told that “Business has never been better.”
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