INQUIRER: The year’s homicide count in Philadelphia reached 300 this morning after two people were found dead this morning, police said. Shortly after midnight, a young man was gunned down in North Philadelphia. About 9:30 a.m., a woman was found beaten to death in her North Philadelphia home. The shooting happened at 12:05 a.m. on the 2500 block of North 17th Street in North Philadelphia, police said. Steven Gates, 25, was shot multiple times, and was taken to Temple University Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 12:30 a.m., according to Sgt. William Gallagher. Gates lived on the 2900 block […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
[Photo by CARLOS FERNANDEZ] ALL THE YOUNG DUDES: Girl Talk + Friends, Starlight Ballroom, September 17 EVA SAYS: Monday night at the Starlight Ballroom was all about heavy-petting and robot dancing. And I do mean heavy, baby. DJ Gregg Gillis, AKA Girl Talk, brought together a sold out crowd of hyper, manic, oddly-dressed, or even not-dressed-at-all hipsters who bum-rushed the stage within seconds of Gillis firing up the Mac Pro that makes it all possible. It didn’t matter that Girl Talk’s hooded figure or scruffy face couldn’t be seen even from the lip of the stage — chances are he […]
KILLADELPHIA: ‘I Don’t Care What Kia Gregory Says’
Today on NPR’s Here & Now, heard locally on WHYY, host Robin Young interviewed Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson about his call to raise a 10,000 man army of voluntary crisis interventionists to help defuse the violence before it starts on the blocks where they live. Young quotes PW’s Kia Gregory calling on Johnson to resign to the Commish, to which he responds “I don’t care what Kia Gregory thinks.” Young continues to quote from Gregory’s work, citing the fact that several hundred beat cops have been pulled off the street and put in desk jobs during the Commish’s reign. […]
PAPERBOY EXTRA! Today I Saw Jeff Deeney On The Cover Of The Rolling Stone Philadelphia Weekly
[Click image to activate Internet] RELATED: CLICK TO ENLARGE JEFF DEENEY SAYS: The two remaining legal graffiti spaces I know of are on Carpenter Street between 12th and 13th and at 49th and Westminster Street in West Philly. There are likely more than these; those with more knowledge of the city’s graffiti scene can feel free to chime in and school us. Please link more photos if you’ve got them. According to BESO the walls around 12th and Carpenter are open to anyone who wants to paint there but at 49th and Westminster, not so much. I think the quality […]
MCNABB: Fear Of A Black Quarterback?
ASSOCIATED PRESS: Donovan McNabb says African-American quarterbacks are perceived differently than white quarterbacks in a wide-ranging interview that will air tonight on HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.”In the conversation, which will be shown at 10 o’clock, McNabb also talks about the pressure of being the quarterback in this city and what it takes to tick him off. At one point, interviewer James Brown asks McNabb about how people perceive him as a quarterback, alluding to the lack of African-Americans at the position because some people thought “they weren’t smart enough.” “There’s not that many African-American quarterbacks, so we have […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR For 18 years, from 1987 to 2006, Alan Greenspan was chair of the Federal Reserve Board — the United States’ central banker, in charge of steering the nation’s monetary policy. His every word was scrutinized by markets, read like tea leaves by market makers and investors looking for clues to his thoughts on the economy’s health. Now he’s put those thoughts on paper, at length, in a memoir. It’s titled The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World, and it discusses everything from his cryptic word choices during Congressional testimony to protracted courtship of his wife, NBC […]
KILLADELPHIA: Just 14, And Stabbing Westward
INQUIRER: Kenneth Groce, 14, surrendered to Philadelphia police yesterday and was charged with the Friday afternoon stabbing death of Jeremiah Smith in North Philadelphia, said Lt. Philip Riehl of the Homicide Division.Riehl said Groce and Smith, 17, got into a fight around 6:40 p.m. and Smith was stabbed and collapsed at a door in the 2300 block of Edgley Street in North Philadelphia. Police recovered a bloody knife at the scene; Smith died about an hour later at Temple University Hospital. MORE
KILLADELPHIA: ‘Shoot The Bitch! Shoot The Bitch!’
DAILY NEWS: In the darkness Thursday night, Esther Schultz ran into the kind of criminals who give this city a bad name. Schultz, 25, parked her car on 24th Street near Parrish, in Fairmount, at about 9 p.m. and started walking toward her house, chatting with her mother on a cell phone along the way. A car pulled up alongside her and a man jumped out and tried to steal her purse, police said. The man knocked Schultz, a therapist for Keystone Hospice, to the ground. Police said a female passenger shouted, “Shoot the bitch! Shoot the bitch!” and the […]
NEWS CLUES: It’s Like Adderall For Your Eyeballs
It’s Official: O.J. Simpson Is Completely Fucked An audio recording of the alleged robbery released by TMZ.com identifies an agitated Simpson uttering obscenities to an unknown person. “You think you can steal my (expletive) and sell it?” says the voice identified as Simpson. The district attorney said he expected Simpson to ultimately be charged with seven felonies and one gross misdemeanor. If convicted of the booking charges, Simpson would face up to 30 years in state prison on each robbery count alone. Simpson owes the Goldman and Brown families $33 million for the deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, […]
THE EARLY WORD: Chico And The Man
BY DAN BUSKIRK JAZZ CRITIC If you could slip through into anybody’s skin, Chico Hamilton‘s life would definitely be an “A” ticket. He was the L.A.’s hottest drummer in L.A. in the 1940s and ’50s, playing with the Big Acts in the Big Rooms, with people like Ellington, Lena Horne, Sammy Davis Jr., Tony Bennett and Billie Holiday. He was there playing behind Chet Baker when the women were just starting to swoon and his own band gave birth to major players like Eric Dolphy, Charles Lloyd, Gabor Szabo and Larry Coryell. He wrote and performed the scores for cinema […]
Nanny-Basher Gets Probation For Bashing Nanny
BY KATHY BOCCELLA INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Villanova heiress Susan Tabas Tepper [not pictured], who recently completed a court-ordered month of psychiatric care for attacking two employees in one year, was sentenced today to 15 months’ probation and fined $600. Tepper smiled but remained silent as she arrived at Montgomery County Courthouse holding hands with her boyfriend, Tony Fercos, the star of an animal and magic act. Compared with previous court appearances, when her hair was disheveled and her face puffy, Tepper looked rested and relaxed. Tepper pleaded guilty in July to physically harassing Urszula Kordzior, a housekeeper and nanny. In […]
GAYBO: The Fringe? Honey, I AM The Goddamn Fringe!
TOMMY ZANE GAYDAR EDITOR I just don’t know how they do it — 70 Fringe and Live Arts Festival performances packed into three weekends. This year was a better year at Fringe all around, with better organization and quality shows. I love theatre as much as anyone, but September is typically outside activity time, and tramp-it-up at the bars time, too. Still, I managed to see some performances. * “Java Drama,” three world premiere plays presented by Dragon Stage and Screen at site-specific performance space Doubleshots Espresso, led the pack of comedies. My fave of the three was “Next Year […]
CURIOUS: Fumo’s Super-Lawyer Recuses Himself
BY JOHN SHIFFMAN INQUIRER STAFF WRITER In a surprising move, Richard A. Sprague and his firm asked today for permission to withdraw as lawyers for indicted state Sen. Vincent J. Fumo (D., Phila.). The request comes just three weeks after U.S. District Judge William Yohn ruled that Sprague and his firm, Sprague & Sprague, could represent Fumo, despite conflicts of interests alleged by prosecutors, as long as Fumo waived and acknowledged any such conflicts in court. Yohn had set such a hearing for later this month. Instead, Sprague and colleagues Mark Sheppard and Geoffrey Johnson filed a motion this morning, […]