LOCATION: Broad and South. CUISINE: So Philly it’s silly. VIBE: Improbably enough for a vegetarian restaurant, Govinda’s is emblematic of the city it calls home, serving classic Philly food (albeit meatlessly), in a classic Philly location, being made by classic Philly people. With all of its greasy, deep fried food smells, open view of the cooking area and the overabundance of baked goods lining the shelves it is something like a junk food junkie’s paradise.The menu options are so extensive that I actually had to take two trips in order to perform a fair assessment of their food. With […]
POLI SIGH: The Last Coming Of Anthony Weiner
Artwork by @DARTH “Dear Anthony Weiner: Thank you for being the fair in CHARLOTTE’S WEB to our collective Templeton the Rat. Signed, All Of Twitter.” — @PattonOswalt
EARLY WORD: Eat The Rich
Teaser track from Saint Rich’s debut, due out on Merge October 1st. If this is any indication, this is good news for fans early 70’s Stones/T-Rex. Less so for fans of the cops. You can download it for free HERE. They play First Unitarian on 10/7.
BLOWING OUR MIND: Ye’s Black Skinhead Video
Have to say, we long ago gave up on Kanye West, thinking his shameless blingfoolery and relentless attention-whoring was making his ego’s ass look ginormous and insufferably baby-mannish. When he went full retardashian we were done. But his stunning performance on the season finale of SNL made us re-think the dismissal. Now comes this fairly astonishing video for “Black Skinhead.” It’s interactive in ways we are still trying to understand (so you have to go watch it HERE), but the track crushes (dig the Gary Glitter rip/trib) and visually-speaking this is some next level shit.
WORTH REPEATING: This Is How Scientology Deals With Heretics (aka Squirrels) That Talk Too Much
FREEDOM MAGAZINE*: They call themselves “The Posse” and they’ve got a leader who goes by the name of “Kingpin.” They saddle up and ride in loose formation, incessantly shooting their mouths and crying in their whiskey about how they’ve been dealt a bad hand. All of which is meant to conjure up images of a renegade gang that rides from town to town serving up their own brand of ruthless justice. They sashay from one reporter to the next with a saddlebag of self-corroborated stories to vindicate themselves for having been excommunicated from the Church.That’s not even remotely what […]
SIDEWALKING: In God We Trust
Second & Girard, Sunday 11:01 am by JONATHAN VALANIA THE GUARDIAN: In Grizzly Man (2005), partly as a counterpoint to the saccharine, Disneyesque view of nature held by that movie’s bear-loving hero, Herzog glumly declares: “I believe that the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility and murder.” It’s no surprise that one of the last things Ian Curtis of Joy Division did before hanging himself was to watch Herzog’s Stroszeck (1977). In overview, his movies can look like a series of Graham Greene novels rewritten by DH Lawrence. Just as Greene had Greeneland, Herzog has Herzogland, and […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Fun @ The Mann
Photo by PETE TROSHAK In what singer Nate Ruess referred to as the biggest show of their career, indie pop stars Fun played a triumphant 16-song set to a sun-baked but exuberant crowd of 15,000 last night. Fun — the capitalization-averse trio composed of Ruess, Jersey-born guitarist Jack Antonoff and jack-of-all-trades Andrew Dost — is still riding high on-the-hog of 2012’s million-plus-selling sophomore album Some Nights. The album is a whiskey-doused tribute to all-nighters, lost loves, family and the beauty and pain of the morning after that connected with audiences both young and old. Their success is based on their ability […]
It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Illustration by TORREN R. THOMAS QUESTLOVE: I live in a “nice” building. I work hard. You know I work hard. My logic is (naïve alert in 5, 4, 3, 2 … ) “Well, there can’t be any fear of any type in this building” — you’ve got to go through hell and high water just to get accepted to live here, like it’s Dartmouth or UPenn. Secondly, there are, like, five to eight guards on duty 24/7, so this spot is beyond safe. Like, Oscar winners and kids of royalty and sports guys and mafia goombahs live here. One night, […]
EDWARD SHARPE: Man On Fire
They play WXPN’s Xponential Fest next Friday.
CINEMA: Trayvon Station
FRUITVALE STATION (2013, directed by Ryan Coogler, 90 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC Fruitvale Station is a true tear-jerker, a genre somewhat disreputable among male film critics (no big surprise) because bypassing the intellectual and heading straight to the emotional is seen as a dirty trick for a film to do to a guy. If Fruitvale Station is particularly successful in milking its viewers’ emotions, it may be because the American public has been slow to show empathy for the violence that been prejudicially doled out by law enforcement against African Americans and people of color in the […]
This Is What Happened When They Turned A Kensington Prison Back Into A Middle School
THE ATLANTIC: Last year when American Paradigm Schools took over Philadelphia’s infamous, failing John Paul Jones Middle School, they did something a lot of people would find inconceivable. The school was known as “Jones Jail” for its reputation of violence and disorder, and because the building physically resembled a youth correctional facility. Situated in the Kensington section of the city, it drew students from the heart of a desperately poor hub of injection drug users and street level prostitution where gun violence rates are off the charts. But rather than beef up the already heavy security to ensure safety […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Fun @ The Mann
A year and change later and the chorus to this song is STILL fucking epic! Easily our favorite hit song/guilty pleasure of 2012. Love this video, too. The show is sold out, but fear not, my droogs, we have a pair of tix to giveaway. To qualify, all you have to do is sign up for our mailing list (see right, below the masthead). Trust us, this is something you want to do. In addition to breaking news alerts and Phawker updates, you also get advanced warning about groovy concert ticket giveaways and other free swag opportunities like this one! […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Mischief Brew @ Morgan’s Pier
The crowd at Morgan’s Pier got a little rowdier than usual on Wednesday night as Philly punk legends, Mischief Brew showed up to play a free show. The chaos began as hoards of punks lined up out front, arguing with security over fake, expired and suspended ID’s and it only got crazier from there. Philly favorites, Bad Doctors, warmed everyone up by blasting the pier with an extremely energized performance. The moment that Mischief Brew’s Erik Petersen got on stage with his natural, charming stage presence and started praising the beauty of Philadelphia and the venue, a drunken roar […]