BY JEFF DEENEY The heartland as detailed by Nick Reding in his new book, Methland, is not your father’s heartland. Stripped of any means of getting ahead by multinational agribusiness conglomerates, many residents of Smalltown, USA are using crystal meth to cope with endless low-wage packing plant shifts and the despair that comes with poverty and social decay. Mexican drug trafficking organizations have capitalized on Big Agriculture’s need for a steady stream of illegal immigrant workers by flooding cornfields with high purity meth made in sprawling superlabs and carried across the border by the same workers who slaughter America’s pigs […]
Ringleader Of Broad St. Flash Mob Riot To Stand Trial
INQUIRER: A West Philadelphia man was ordered held for trial today on riot, assault, theft and other charges for allegedly participating in the May 30 “flash mob” on South Broad Street that left one man seriously injured and a local convenience store looted of thousands in merchandise. Stephen Lyde, 21, was ordered held for trial by Philadelphia Municipal Court Judge Bradley K. Moss in the late-night rampage by more than 100 teens and young adults on South Broad between South and Bainbridge Streets. According to testimony during this morning’s preliminary hearing, the mob converged on South Broad after apparently being […]
USELESS INFORMATION: Father Knows Best
SHITMYDADSAYS: “What are you listening to?…I know who Hall & Oates are god dammit. It’s the mustache guy and the gay man.” MORE SHITMYDADSAYS: I’m 28. I live with my 73-year-old dad. He is awesome. I just write down shit that he says. MORE RELATED: You can follow Phawker’s Twitter stream HERE
Incendiary 9/11-On-Steroids Ad Widely Condemned; Philly International Joins ‘Trusted Traveler’ Program
[Click HERE to enlarge] NEW YORK TIMES: The World Wildlife Fund on Tuesday condemned an unauthorized advertisement that depicted dozens of planes heading into Lower Manhattan, with a tag line reading, “The Tsunami Killed 100 Times More People Than 9/11.” The ad had been pitched to the Brazilian branch of the World Wildlife Fund by an advertising agency and rejected, said Steve Ertel, a spokesman for the group. “It was a concept to our office in Brazil and it was rejected. From that point, we have not been able to get a hold of the agency to find out how […]
ARTSY: Get Your Fringe On
BY LINDSAY HARRIS-FRIEL FRINGE CORRESPONDENT The Philadelphia Live Arts and Philly Fringe Festival has been a local institution for long enough, loudly and proudly enough, that we almost take it for granted. In the past 12 years it’s grown from a few blocks in Old City to a festival encompassing the city, all genres of live performance and performers from all over the world. Shows in the past have been so diverse and varied that the word “Fringe” has become synonymous with the strangest and most alienating of performance art. However, the Festival itself is one of the most welcoming […]
HELP WANTED: Mob Looking For A Few Bad Men
GEORGE ANASTASIA: Decimated by a 20-year onslaught of federal prosecutions, bloody internecine power struggles, and turncoat testimony, the local branch of La Cosa Nostra — which in the 1980s had roughly 80 members — now has a base of about 20 “soldiers.” And nine of them are in prison. Simply put, the Philadelphia Mafia has fallen on hard times. It is no longer the dominant player in the underworld, and is dwarfed in size by some of the area’s more violent drug gangs. MORE PREVIOUSLY: Where Have All The Gangsters Gone?
EARLY WORD: Making Time Aquatic
? The Making Time Pool Party… The Sequel… The Movie or “Hot Dog the Movie, Part III” from Klip Collective on Vimeo. Sunday September 6th, 2009 @ Bamboo Bar 927 Delaware Ave (below Frankford/around the corner from The Barbary) Philadelphia, PA 4pm-2am (more details HERE)
GREATEST HITS: Today I Saw Revisited
BY JEFF DEENEY TODAY I SAW a white kid, maybe 12, with dirty blond hair cropped short, pedaling an adult size tricycle with a wooden box between the rear wheels up D Street towards Indiana Avenue. Attached to the back of the graffiti tagged wooden box was a fifteen inch stereo speaker that blared rap music loud enough to shake my windshield. The face of a car stereo was mounted to the front of the box so he could reach down to adjust the volume or skip tracks while coasting along. There was a subwoofer inside the box nestled in […]
CONCERT REVIEW: Britney At The Wachovia
DAN DELUCA: Throughout, she wore a headset microphone and consistently moved her mouth in time with the never all-that-expressive vocals that were pumped through the sound system. Probably, she was actually singing over pre-recorded tracks that removed any possibility of an aural mishap. […] Spears fans were deliriously happy to be in the same room with one of the biggest brand-name superstars in the world, and the object of their affection worked hard enough to put on a properly sensory-overloaded show, with a stage that shot off smoke jets and lit up in a burning ring of fire as Brit […]
SEPTA GIRL: The Three Wise Men
BY PHILLYGRRL It’s surprisingly easy to resent the homeless man who uses the bench at your bus stop as a bed. Especially if you’re carrying three textbooks that weigh five pounds a piece and are waiting for a bus that comes once an hour. Last Thursday, as I waited for the 44 to come by at 13th and Market, I found the bench occupied by three elderly men – two black, one white – who were engrossed in a deep conversation when I came by. I stood for a minute before one man nudged the other who nudged the other […]
Monk’s Shut Down After Fatal Fire Escape Collapse
[Photo by ldandersen] INQUIRER: An iron-wrought railing gave way from the ivy-covered brick fire tower about 3 a.m. today as a 25-year-old man who lived in an apartment one floor below and a female friend were leaning on it, authorities said. The man was pronounced dead at the scene and the woman was taken to Hahnemann Hospital, police said. Directly below the fire tower is a narrow alley and a fence enclosing the back of a spa next door. The man’s identity was being withheld pending notification of next of kin. The woman was not identified because she was in […]
BREAKING: DJ AM Found Dead In New York
NBC: Celebrity disk-jockey DJ AM was found dead in SoHo today, sources told NBC New York. He was 36 years old. The body of DJ AM, also known as Adam Goldstein, was found on the seventh floor of an apartment building at 215 Lafayette Street, law-enforcement sources said. Goldstein, along with drummer Travis Barker, barely escaped death in a small plane crash in South Carolina on Sept. 19, 2008. That incident left him badly burned, but four others died in the accident. The details of his demise are still unclear, but police sources said investigators are looking into the possibility of a drug overdose, as drug […]