Employees at a popular South Street store were scratching their heads over a special delivery Saturday morning. Police were called to the Fusion jeans boutique, on South Street near 4th, after employees received not one but two packages of marijuana, with a total of 20 pounds of weed. “Officers received a call that the manager of the store had received a package from FedEx and when he opened it there was a five-gallon bucket inside,” said Capt. Chris Werner of Narcotics Field Unit 2. “We don’t usually get Saturday deliveries, so right away we thought something was up,” said another […]
OBIT: David Berger, The People’s Lawyer
By ANDREW MAYKUTH Inquirer Staff Writer David Berger, who called himself a “people’s lawyer,” was best known as one of the pioneers of class-action lawsuits. After leaving the Philadelphia City Solicitor’s Office for private practice, he recovered billions of dollars from the government, big oil companies, and Wall Street bankers for legions of small clients. Mr. Berger, 94, who of died of pneumonia Thursday in Palm Beach, Fla., won major cases in the Three Mile Island nuclear power accident, the Exxon Valdez oil spill, and the Drexel Burnham Lambert junk-bond scandal. His firm won a $2 billion settlement from the […]
Teacher Confiscates iPod, Students Break His Neck
A high school teacher was assaulted by two students and hospitalized with broken vertebrae after he took an iPod away from one of them during class, officials said. Frank Burd, 60, was in a hallway at Germantown High School shortly after 11 a.m. when he was confronted by the 17-year-old who brought the iPod to class, officials said Friday. A 15-year-old student joined the confrontation and either punched or helped trip Burd, who fell and hit his head, said Fernando Gallard, a spokesman for the Philadelphia School District. Burd was taken to Albert Einstein Medical Center with two broken bones […]
THE MICHAEL SMERCONISH EXPLAINER: Wiping The Smirk Off Mr. Clean With The Dirty Rag Of Truth
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Michael Smerconish looks like Mr. Clean, or, as he is known to Russian housewives, Mr. Proper. Michael Smerconish is also a country club Republican, a talk-radio host and, as of late, a regular fixture of the Inquirer’s Sunday Op-Ed page. Bully for him, we’re all for equal time and open debate even if we think he has his head up his ass most of the time. Sadly, because of guys like Smerconish — Machiavellian media climbers that will say ANYTHING to ensure their butt space in the game of musical chairs that is the talking head punditocracy […]
S&M: Turns Out Strom Thurmond Owned Al Sharpton
ASSOCIATED PRESS NEW YORK — Geneaologists have found that civil rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton is a descendent of a slave owned by relatives of the late Sen. Strom Thurmond, a newspaper reported Sunday. The Daily News said professional genealogists, working at the newspaper’s behest, recently uncovered the ancestral ties between one of the nation’s best known black leaders and a man who was once a prominent defender of segregation. “I have always wondered what was the background of my family,” the newspaper quoted Sharpton as saying. “But nothing _ nothing _ could prepare me for this.” “It’s chilling. […]
STUDY: Civic Leadership Not On Same Page, Making Matters Worse Many Citizens Can’t Even Read The Page
A new study commissioned by the Pew Charitable Trusts depicts Philadelphia as a place that has two sets of leaders, one political, one civic, with similar goals, different outlooks, and little contact with each other. The report, which updates a similar document published in 1999, describes a city that has made real progress over the last eight years but is still held back by widespread poverty, high taxes, and a poorly educated workforce. In the earlier report, author Basil J. Whiting, a Brooklyn-based consultant, found the city’s overall condition “decidedly negative.” A key weakness, he wrote then, was the fatalism […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
ALL YOUNG IN THE SOUL: The Photon Band + Like A Fox, Johnny Brendas, Last Night [FLICKR] [Photos by JONATHAN VALANIA]
TODAY I SAW…
BY JEFF DEENEY “Today I saw…” is a series of nonfiction shorts based on my experiences as a caseworker serving formerly homeless families now living in North and West Philadelphia. I decided not long after starting the job that I was seeing so many fascinating and disturbing things in the city’s poorest neighborhoods that I needed to start cataloging them. I hope this bi-weekly column serves as a record of a side of the city that many Philadelphians don’t come in contact with on a daily basis. I want to capture moments not frequently covered by the local media, which […]
NOW PLAYING: The Good, The Bad & The Queen
[NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO] In 1993, it was with little left to lose that Blur’s Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon — bottom of the bill at an Xfm fundraiser in Finsbury Park — gave the premiere of a new song to a small, indifferent crowd. Entitled For Tomorrow, it was a sad little love song to the city on which Albarn so desperately wanted to make his mark. If there was a hitherto untapped passion in the way Albarn sang the line about “hanging on for dear life,” it was hardly surprising. That was him there, forlornly throwing out […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
OUR MOTHER THE MOUNTAIN: Son Volt, WORLD CAFE LIVE, Noon BY AMY Z. QUINN It’s difficult to know sometimes whether Jay Farrar is actually enjoying himself up there. The never-excitable singer/songsmith at the front of Son Volt rarely cracks a smile, doesn’t dance and, as per usual, is a man of few-to-no words. But those are the wrong places to look for vital signs with this guy. With Farrar it’s when his left leg starts going, a steady stomp that never gets faster, only pounds harder against the stage while he works out his quiet rage. And what beautiful rage […]