INQUIRER: Josh Kopelman doesn’t seem to agree. A book titled The Richest Man in Town calls the young enterpreneur/venture capitalist the wealthiest self-made person in Philadelphia. But Kopelman hated the title, said author W. Randall Jones, who traveled to 100 U.S. cities and towns to compile the collection of business wisdom, published last month by Hatchett Book Group. “He was very upset with me,” said Jones. Perhaps the reason was that others, like Richard Hayne, founder of Urban Outfitters, have better claim to the title. Hayne has been on Forbes’ billionaire list several times, but was one of dozens who […]
CONTEST: Win A Sonic Youth Dream Date
Sonic Youth is like a chronic girlfriend we keep breaking up with, if only because the make-up sex is so good. We’ve been on board — and occasionally off — ever since Bad Moon Rising, ever since we heard that mesmerizing wall of abstract expressionist guitars graffiti’d with the immortal words: “A genius and a sex maniac, taking lots of drugs and fucking all day.” Man, nice work if you can get it! The just-out The Eternal is a remarkable late-period return to form from a band we’ve written off more times than we care to admit. Anyway, if you’ve […]
DEATH ON THE PIAZZA: Drug Hit Plot Thickens
DAILY NEWS: Kidnapped and robbed by drug dealers in 2004, party planner Rian Thal turned mum after her release, refusing to identify her captors. The 34-year-old blonde’s silence spurred her rise “from hanger-on to one of the players,” a law-enforcement source said. She became a “big-time drug dealer,” supplying heavy quantities of her specialty, powder cocaine, to other dealers, and at least once sold Ketamine, an animal tranquilizer known as “Special K,” another source said. The revelations about her secret life emerged yesterday during Daily News interviews with law-enforcement and other sources familiar with her drug dealing and other activities.Homicide […]
’80s FLASHBACK: Q&A With The Church
BY BARRY GUTMAN Twenty-nine years into their career, Australian quartet The Church – singer/bassist Steve Kilbey, guitarists Peter Koppes and Marty Willson-Piper, and, for the past 15 years, drummer Tim Powles – are back with a new album, Untitled #23. Don’t take that number literally – it’s much higher when you figure in B-sides and EP collections, re-mixes, jam albums, soundtracks and best-ofs, not to mention countless solo and side projects. The band that hit with “The Unguarded Moment” in Australia in 1980 and “Under the Milky Way” worldwide in 1988 is not going for the easy nostalgia buck. When […]
SEPTA GIRL: The Only Ones
[Photo byEDWARD NOBLE] BY PHILLY GRRL When not riding SEPTA semi-professionally for Phawker, I tutor kids K-12 on behalf of the Philadelphia School District. As part of my resolve to ride on every single bus route in Philadelphia, I blithely hop onto the 23 Bus for the first time to meet a student in Mt. Airy. The bus is packed with the after-school student crowd. To the left of me, two schoolgirls in plaid, scarlet-colored uniforms are semi-surreptitiously eating large slices of cheese pizza. To the right of me a woman is screaming into her cell-phone about a girl friend […]
DEATH ON THE PIAZZA: No Libs Drug Hit Kills 2
INQUIRER: Rian Thal, 34, was a party girl. Known as “the white girl,” the 5-foot-4 blonde threw parties in Society Hill and Northern Liberties which drew aspiring hip-hop rappers, pro athletes and the city’s top drug dealers, according to law enforcement sources. Even star rapper Beanie Sigel showed up sometimes at parties around 2nd and Market streets, the sources said. “She was not unfamiliar with drugs, money and rappers,” one investigator said. “She might have been questioned a lot of times.” On Saturday, her lifestyle apparently caught up with her. Thal and a male friend were shot several times and […]
REMINDER: Follow Us On Twitter
Because it scares the shit out of tyrants. You can find us HERE. Do it today!
CINEMA: I Love My Bicycle
I Love My Bicycle: The Story of FBM Bikes Trailer from Joe Stakun on Vimeo. I Love My Bicycle: The Story of FBM Bikes Trailer from BAD BREAKS on Vimeo. BY KYLEE MESSNER It’s hard to pinpoint just when BMX riding began, though there are stories of southern California teens riding their bikes on dirt roads in the early 1970s. It wasn’t until 1981 that the International BMX Federation was formed. Following the evolution of most industries, BMX companies began very hands on and mom-and-pop, only to become more corporate in the pursuit of a wider audiences. FBM is one […]
RAWK TAWK: Q&A With Brooklyn’s Telepathe
Telepathe perform Friday at JBs in support of their debut, Dance Mother “Floating between crystalline electronica, misty shoegaze and ass-shaking club-rap, ‘Dance Mother’ is disorientating by design; like being set down on some unfamiliar street corner where the drone of synth from a nearby window meets the boom of bass from a passing car, and snippets of overheard conversation hang in the air like cryptic incantations. More than any other outfit since TV On The Radio, Telepathe illustrate the modern hipster condition: why choose between Lil Wayne, Animal Collective, Madonna and My Bloody Valentine, when you can have all of […]
Q&A: Novelist & Ex-NPR Host Farai Chideya
BY DIANCA POTTS Who says there are no second acts in American Life? (OK, F. Scott Fitzgerald said it, but that doesn’t mean it’s true) Scratch an NPR host and find a budding novelist. In advance of her appearance tonight at the Free Library, we called up former News And Notes host Farai Chideya to discuss just about everything under the sun: Obama, NPR, blogging, goth rock, the state of race relations in America, the Smiths, mixtapes and, most importantly her new book. Chideya is currently on the road in support of her debut novel, Kiss the Sky, which captures […]
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 […]
GOODNIGHT MR. WELLS: PW Writer Extraordinaire Steven Wells Loses Long, Public Battle With Cancer
Damn. Steven Wells was THE funniest, ballsiest, take-no-prisoners writer to grace the pages of Philadelphia print media in recent memory. His long, tragic battle with cancer was no secret, he wrote about it with the same unflinching honesty, hair-on-fire rage, savage wit and gallows humor he wrote about everything. Sir, it was a privilege and an honor. You will be sorely missed. Good night Mr. Wells, wherever you are. PW: Steven Wells Farewell Column WIKIPEDIA: Steven Wells is was a British journalist and author currently based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Born in Swindon, England in 1960, Wells moved to the […]
Cop Testifies About Pre-Beatdown Shooting
INQUIRER: “I saw the muzzle flash . . . and heard 8 to 10 shots in rapid succession,” Buitrago said. Despite the late hour, the undercover officer said he could clearly see the gunman and his friends, lit by a streetlamp. “I could see their faces and the whites of their eyes and their lips moving,” he said. Dyches, Hall, and Hopkins ran back to the parked Marquis as two other men darted into a nearby alleyway, he said. Buitrago said he immediately sent out a radio “flash” alerting nearby officers to the shooting and the descriptions of the men. […]