LOLLAPALOOKAVILLE: Texans Bail On Belmont, Please Touch Say ‘Please Don’t’ The Austin, Texas, outfit that proposed a three-day pop festival for Belmont Plateau in August has withdrawn the bid and is pursuing alternative plans, park officials said today. A competing proposal from Larry Magid’s Electric Factory Concerts has not been withdrawn, Magid said late today, although he added that he had strong reservations about the site. Magid said today that a scaled-down, two-day event in and around the Mann Music Center might be more appropriate. And in a letter to the park last week, he suggested that June might be […]
THE VELS: Look My Way
Chris Larkin played keyboards for the most prominent line-up of Kenn Kweder’s Secret Kidds in the late 1970s (the one that recorded the “Man on the Moon” 45), was in a short-lived jazz fusion group called Snow, played in a duo with Kweder as “Tom & Jim,” did some producing (including Kweder’s 2nd 7″, and some tracks by The Impossible Years), was a keyboardist, singer and songwriter for electropop trio The Vels, who recorded for Mercury Records, and in the late 1980s played bass for Mikey Wild and the Mess. Chris passed away due to complications from pneumonia & liver […]
QUESTION THE PARKING AUTHORITY: GOP Got Paid
INQUIRER: Though the Philadelphia Parking Authority has fallen short in its promised funding for city schools, it certainly has been a boon for the Philadelphia Republican Party. Authority employees and consultants have contributed at least $214,000 to the Republican City Committee since 2001, according to an Inquirer analysis of campaign finance data. The contributions this year have reached at least $33,210, or more than 14 percent of the party’s total. Those figures don’t include money that those same employees and contractors have given to top Republican ward leaders, who happen to run the Parking Authority. MORE
KILLADELPHIA: 3 More Dead Since U Went To Bed
University of Pennsylvania police early Monday morning shot and killed a man accused of shooting a disc jockey at a strip club near the Penn campus, according to Philadelphia police. A campus police officer shot the alleged gunman after the DJ was shot inside Club Wizzards located below Chili’s restaurant at 38th and Chestnut Street, a homicide detective said. Campus police shot the alleged gunman in the chest at about 12:14 a.m. outside of Chili’s as he ran away. Authorities say University of Pennsylvania police were called to a report of a fight at the strip club. As police arrived […]
WE KNOW IT’S ONLY ROCK N’ ROLL BUT WE LIKE IT
GOD + WEEN + SATAN = THE ONENESS: Ween, Tower Theater, Last Night BY JONATHAN VALANIA FOR THE INQUIRER They say actors are the ultimate existential heroes because they get to live multiple lives, while the rest of us have to settle for just one. Similarly, there is something heroic about Ween’s 23-year quest for the ultimate buzz, musical or otherwise, and their Zelig-like ability to utterly inhabit any genre they choose — shit-kicker country, dirtball metal, gold chain disco, hobbit-hole psychedelia, even fern-bar kool jazz — while simultaneously satirizing it for your protection. The new La Cucaracha, the 11th […]
MEDIA: When Is A Hamster Just A Hamster?
Last Monday, we called foul on PW’s Holiday Guide cover depicting vermin dressed up as an orthodox Jew. PAPERBOY EXTRA: Separated At Birth? Bad ideas have a way of making friends in low places, but shit like this shoulda never made it up the ladder. The image on the right is easy enough to find, just Google “rats” and “Jews”; the image on the left is the cover of this week’s PW. Frankly, we think it should have been the euthanized before it got beyond “Hey, what if we…” stage. Given the long and well-documented history of vicious anti-Semites — […]
BRIDGE TO NOWHERE: The Ben Takes Two Sisters
BY DAVE DAVIES OF THE DAILY NEWS Two women who were killed in a four-vehicle crash that forced the shutdown of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge late Thanksgiving night were identified yesterday as elderly sisters who lived on opposite sides of the bridge. Seven others were hurt in the accident, which occurred in the eastbound lanes at about 10:40 p.m. according to Danelle Hunter, spokeswoman for the Delaware River Port Authority which operates the bridge. Traffic was closed in the eastbound lanes until 1:45 a.m. and in the westbound lanes for close to an hour, Hunter said. Neighbors identified the two […]
THE TROUBLE WITH SANTORUM: Not So Much A Column But A Pat On The Back — His Own Back
You know, when you’re a politician, you can throw around this kind of self-serving hyperbole and nobody will call you on it because, frankly, everyone expects you to lie. But when you start writing a column for the newspaper, you can’t just pull shit out of your ass and state it as fact. From paragraph two of Rick Santorum’s Elephant In The Room column in the Inquirer: Along with churches and families, government has played a role in, at first, nurturing – and, more recently, weakening – this social compact. One of my greatest frustrations as a Republican leader was […]
GUNCRAZY: Two Teens Confess To 14 Armed Bar Robberies And Two Gunpoint Carjackings
BY DAVE GAMBACORTA OF THE DAILY NEWS At an age when most boys are focused on prom dates and driver’s licenses, police say two West Philly teens have been busy masterminding a staggering citywide crime wave. The boys — ages 15 and 16 — were arrested on Monday after they confessed to committing 14 bar robberies and two carjackings at gunpoint during the past month, said Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives. The teens, whose names were not released, were each charged with multiple counts of robbery and related offenses. “They pretended to be patrons but ended up demanding money […]
MEDIA: Mayor Nutter Butter Meets The Gray Lady
Michael Nutter, who takes office in January, offered plans to declare crime emergencies in Philadelphia’s most violent areas. BY IAN URBINA OF THE NEW YORK TIMES Published: November 23, 2007 PHILADELPHIA — The day after Michael Nutter won a landslide victory to become this city’s next mayor, he put on a charcoal gray suit and drove to his first public event: the funeral of a police officer shot in a brazen daytime robbery. Two nights before he announced his choice for police commissioner, two more officers were shot and wounded. When Mr. Nutter takes office on Jan. 7, he will […]
QUESTION EL PARKING AUTHORITY: PPA Goes CYA
DAILY NEWS: A week after the Daily News raised questions about the size of the Philadelphia Parking Authority’s auto fleet, the agency has asked 18 of its mid-level managers to give up the car keys. The Parking Authority issued a news release yesterday, saying that it expects to save $400,000 next year by limiting the number of managers permitted to take company cars home for the night, and by postponing the purchase of 18 new sedans and SUVs. The authority also projected $1 million in savings from a reduction of 10 management jobs through attrition and retirements.Last week, the Daily […]
ADBUST: You Had Us At ‘The Circulation Goes Up…’
But you completely lost us on the ‘and the pigs touch down‘ part. What does that even mean?