DAILY BEAST: It’s not as surprising as you’d think that someone like Thal, a reported casual coke user, would find herself being asked if she wanted to start participating in deals. I once knew a coke dealer—not a barroom nickel and dimer, but the kind of dude who could get you kilo if you needed it—and there were moments of opportunity when I, too, was asked if I wanted to get in on the game. Did I want to front five grand and go in on a niner? The question came up more than once. So when I read about […]
CINEMA: He’s Bringing ‘Sexy Time’ Back
Brüno (2009, directed by Larry Charles, 83 minutes, U.S.) BY DAN BUSKIRK FILM CRITIC I had one of my most memorable cinematic experiences in the early nineties while living in San Francisco. Some local TV obsessive had spent years videotaping his channel surfing, which he then boiled down to a 90-minute program on the grotesque extremes of the American id. He had weeping TV preachers, cackling midget wrestlers, drunken talk show guests and just when you thought you’d seen it all he would cut in some gratuitous footage of a horse mounting some brave and foolish young woman. Whenever the […]
SEPTAGIRL: I Saw Her Standing There
BY PHILLYGRRL The first time I met her, we were both standing inside the Walgreen’s on JFK Boulevard waiting for the 38 bus to come by. It was one of the coldest nights of the winter and the bus was running late. It was the kind of cold that creeps inside any number of layers and leaves you hopping from one foot to the other, hoping you can crush some warmth into your toes. The man beside me had already run across the street to get a pocket-sized bottle of vodka from the Wine & Spirits store. He’d mixed it […]
JIM CROW SWIMS HERE: Valley Swim Club Discrimination Becomes National Embarrassment
[Photo via A RUBBER DOOR] THE FORTY-NINE PERCENTER: I arrived at the Valley Swim Club (22 Tomlinson Road – Huntingdon Vly, PA 19006 (215) 947-0700) around 11:00am. When I got there, CNN, NBC-10 and ABC-6 were already there. In fact, Channel 10 had a helicopter circling overhead. A patrol-car was parked across the street to make sure nothing got out-of-hand. […] A member of the club, Jim Flynn, pulled up to the padlocked gates of the club and walked over to us. He said he wanted to make a statement. So, the press readied their microphones and cameras. A five […]
PAPERBOY: Slow-Jamming The Alt-Weeklies
BY DAVE ALLEN Like time, news waits for no man. Keeping up with the funny papers has always been an all-day job, even in the pre-Internets era. These days, however, it’s a two-man job. That’s right, these days you need someone to do your reading for you, or risk falling hopelessly behind and, as a result, increasing your chances of dying lonely and somewhat bitter. That’s why every week, PAPERBOY does your alt-weekly reading for you. We pore over those time-consuming cover stories and give you the takeaway, suss out the cover art, warn you off the ink-wasters and steer […]
ARTSY: No Peace In The Valley
BY GREG ADOMAITIS Tom Hunter no longer has a crew cut. His long red hair — he calls it “civilian camouflage” — and tattoos make him look more like a habitue of the mosh pit at Lollapalooza than a member of the 173rd Airborne Division, where he served as sergeant from 2003 to 2008. He enlisted the day after he graduated from high school. Hunter became interested in documenting the days-in-the-life of his military experience, starting with a disposable camera he found on an army base and eventually upgrading to a pricey Sony DSLR. During his last tour of duty […]
News Of Post-Racial Era Slow To Reach Swim Club
“There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.” — Valley Swim Club President John Duesler explaining why he refunded the $1900 Creative Steps Day Camp paid to swim there one day a week. The kids that attend Creative Steps are black. The majority of members of the Valley Swim Club are white. RELATED: “When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool,” Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. “The pool attendants came and told the […]
THIS JUST IN: After Fighting It For 40 Years, Philadelphia Agrees To Desegregate Schools
INQUIRER: Nearly 40 years after the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission went to court seeking equal education for white and minority students in the city, the Philadelphia School District is poised to settle the landmark desegregation case by instituting reforms to benefit black and Hispanic children. The settlement would have broad implications, not only for students but for teachers. Regardless of their union contract, many could see significant changes in where they work, how much they are paid, and how they are evaluated. The School Reform Commission yesterday unanimously endorsed the agreement with the state commission, which filed the lawsuit against […]
EARLY WORD: Go West, Young Man
[Click image to activate Internets] Fasten your seatbelts, kids, because all this month we will be featuring interviews with artists performing at APW and holding ticket giveaway contests. Why? Because we love you!
Ever Wonder How Many People Live In Center City?
[Image courtesy of PhillyHISTORY.org] VISITPHILLY: Brag fact for the day: More than 92,000 locals live in Center City Philadelphia, making it the third-most-inhabited downtown in the nation. [via TWITTER] TOTAL POPULATION: 1,449,634 [Source: U.S. Census Bureau] POPULATION CHANGE SINCE 1990: -135, 943
DEATH BY CHOCOLATE: Camden Candyman Killed
FOX NEWS: Police said a man died Wednesday morning after falling into a tank full of chocolate at a Camden business. Police were called to a warehouse and manufacturing facility on the 700 block of North 36th Street around 10:45 a.m. Wednesday for a report of a man who had fallen into hot chocolate. The man had been in the melting pot for about 10 minutes by the time crews arrived, and by the time he was pulled out of the chocolate it was too late. He was declared dead shortly after 11 a.m. The turnout gear of firefighters at […]
ARSTY: Brother From Another Planet
Lecture: John Szwed, Author of Space Is The Place Whenever Wednesday, July 8 @ 7pm FREE at ICA Institute of Contemporary Art · University of Pennsylvania 118 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-3289 · 215.898.5911 Hear a lecture by John Szwed, the biographic expert on all things Ra. He is an anthropologist, musicologist and historian who teaches at Columbia University and is the author of Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra (Da Capo Press, 1998). [Complete listing of upcoming Sun Ra-related events after the jump]
GET NAKED: The Flaming Lips Are Coming!
August 29th at the Festival Pier. Joy to the world! PREVIOUSLY: Having become sentient in the mid-’70s, somewhere in the middle of that that vast mountainous Pennsyltucky between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, I had a front row seat to one of the places where the ’60s went to die: the hinterlands. While more cosmopolitan zip codes were sampling disco, cocaine, Members Only jackets and punk, all I could see growing up was ex-greaser shitkickers in dirty bellbottoms, Greg Brady haircuts, faded Dark Side of The Moon T-shirts and knocked-up girlfriends in peasant dresses billowing with pre-natal pulchritude, blasting Zep, Floyd and […]