Phawker Mean Streets Editor Jeff Deeney will be on NBC10 at 5:30 pm today discussing flash mob violence.
Schoolly D Not Happy To Find His Lyrics Inside Norwegian Psycho Killer’s 1,500 Page Rant
Deep inside Anders Breivik’s 1,400 page ‘manifesto’, “2083: A European Declaration of Independence,” in between all the raging Islamophobia, pathological nativism, and bomb-making instructions, the man who killed 77 innocent, unarmed people in cold blood, warns readers of the negative effect that gangsta rap lyrics have on society. In section 2.67 of the PDF version, Breivik includes a slightly bastardized version of John P McWhorter‘s 2003 anti-rap diatribe How Hip-Hop Holds Blacks Back, which singles out a few of the most sensational lines from Schoolly D’s proto-gangsta rap “PSK What Does It Mean?” to illustrate the toxicity of hip-hop: Copped […]
THIS JUST IN: Inquirer Building Sold To Bart Blatstein; No Plans To Move It To Northern Liberties
PHILADELPHIA MEDIA NETWORK: PMN announced today that it entered into an agreement with Tower Investments, Inc., owned by Bart Blatstein, to sell the building that is home to PMN headquarters at 400 North Broad Street, in addition to the sale of an adjacent parking garage and lot. The purchase price is not being disclosed. PMN is exploring options with respect to their future space, including the possibility of remaining at the 400 North Broad Street location or identifying new space in the region. “As Philadelphia Media Network continues its successful digital transformation, the efficient utilization of our assets will be […]
Q&A With The Regulars Photographer Sarah Stolfa
BY JONATHAN VALANIA Pretty much everyone in this town knows about The Regulars, Sarah Stolfa’s stunning Bukowski-meets-Caravaggio portraiture of McGlinchey’s patrons, snapped from behind the bar where she earned the dubious distinction of Unfriendliest Bartender In Town. The series won her first place in the New York Times Sunday Magazine’s Photography Contest For College Students, a long-running exhibition at Gallery 339 and an asspocket full of local acclaim and national recognition, including a residency at the Whitney Museum Of American Art in New York. And now Artisan Books has published the series in richly-appointed book form with a snarky-but-snappy essay […]
IT’S ALWAYS RUMMY IN PHILADELPHIA: Q&A with Brian McManus, Noted Author & Professional Drinker
Whenever we recall our gloriously misspent season in the dives, aka our 20s, we remember the good times, and those that served, and those that gave their lives, and those lines from Howl: “Who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their torsos night after night…who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford’s floated out and sat through the stale beer afternoon in desolate Fugazzi’s, listening to the crack of doom on the hydrogen jukebox.” For one long, blurry, Bukowskian year, PW Food and Music editor Brian McManus was living those words. […]
ANNIVERSARY: Frank Rizzo Still Making ‘Attila The Hun Look Like A F*ggot’ 20 Years After Death
INQUIRER: The crowd surrounding the Frank L. Rizzo statue Saturday afternoon seemed to be in a time warp, as the former Philadelphia mayor’s entourage and admirers came out to pay their respects. The Quaker City String Band played as dignitaries arrived on foot and in cars, some following the motorcade that came down Broad Street from Holy Sepulchre Cemetery in Cheltenham to the Municipal Services Building, across from City Hall. Saturday marked 20 years since Rizzo died of a heart attack while campaigning for a third term as mayor, a job he had held from 1972 to 1980. Even in […]
We Know It’s Only Rock N’ Roll But We Like It
U2, Lincoln Financial Field, 9:34 PM BY JONATHAN VALANIA DAN DELUCA: The band took the stage to the strains of David Bowie’s “Space Oddity.” And in the night’s most-winning gambit, the foursome brought off a gleaming, life-affirming “Beautiful Day,” dedicated to recovering Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, with the aid of her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, in a video clip recorded in outer space. “Tell my wife I love her very much, she knows,” Kelly said, speaking a Bowie line that Bono then sang as U2’s song segued into Bowie. It might sound corny, but it made my hair stand on […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Cass McCombs At JBs
OK, we’re gonna make this real easy, i.e. Google-able, and hyper-local: What Cass McCombs album contains the song “City Of Brotherly Love”? First Phawker reader to email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the correct answer wins two tix to see Cass McCombs at Johnny Brendas on Sunday July 17th. Put CASS in the subject line and include a cell phone number for confirmation. Good luck and godspeed. PITCHFORK: Over the course of his previous four albums, McCombs fashioned himself an enigmatic vagabond in the classic Dylan mold, yet it wasn’t until 2009’s Catacombs that his enigma started to feel more like […]
THIS JUST IN: Bob Dylan At The Mann Aug. 17th
On sale Saturday. Tickets available at Ticketmaster.com, 800.745.3000, AEGLive.com, MannCenter.org, TicketPhiladelphia.org, 215-893-1999 or The Mann box office. ROLLING STONE: In newly released audio from a March 1966 interview, Bob Dylan claims he kicked a heroin habit after moving to New York City. “I got very, very strung out for a while,” he says in excerpts released by the BBC. “I kicked the habit. I had a $25 a day habit and I kicked it.” He was speaking to New York Times writer Robert Shelton on a plane from Lincoln, Nebraska to Denver while on his legendary 1966 electric tour. This […]
COMMENTARY: A Home Where The Buffalo Roam
BY JEFF DEENEY In yesterday’s Inquirer there was another article in a long series of familiar articles telling us yet again that the city’s homeless shelter system is a dismal failure. The shelter system cannot provide even basic services to many who engage it, let alone make a start towards the city’s stated goal of ending homelessness. There’s really nothing new, here; we all know how this story goes. Though the unique twist in this particular article was its focus on the groaning, overcrowded family shelters, reporting that they are already at capacity early in the system’s peak summer months […]
EXCLUSIVE: Penn Relays Was A Magnet For Immigration Fraud According To Wikileaked Cable
U.S. EMBASSY KINGSTON JAMAICA: The Penn Relays track and field meet in April of each year is a major athletic event that is a significant cultural milestone for many young Jamaican athletes. Hundreds of high school and university students apply for visas each spring to attend the meet. However, many mala fide applicants apply for visas to attend the meet as well, disguising themselves as student athletes. MORE RELATED: In January, FPU intercepted a group of sixteen performers who had close ties to the Caribbean Alliance Group, a petitioner known to FPU to have associations with drug trafficking. While this […]
EARLY WORD: The Roots Of The Matter
Click HERE for tickets. You know you wanna! PREVIOUSLY: Like France, the picnic remains proof positive that, despite wild-eyed Tea Party protests to the contrary, socialism actually can work. Everyone brings something, we all share, and everyone lives relatively happily ever after — sometimes anyway. Such was the case at Saturday’s third annual Roots Picnic at the Festival Pier in Philadelphia. Senegal’s horn-y, percussion-heavy Baja and the Dry Eye Crew brought the world beats. Face-painted, ukulele-strumming one-gal-band TuneYards brought the weirdness. New Orleans rapper Jay Electronica brought the conspiracy theories (specifically the damning federal indictment of “Candyman”). Detroit’s Mayer Hawthorne, […]
CONTEST: Win Tix To See Bell X1
We have two pairs of tickets to see Talking Heads-ian Irish alt-rockers Bell X1 tomorrow night at First Unitarian for the first two readers that email us at FEED@PHAWKER.COM with the answer to this trivia question: What is the name of the Bell X1 song that plays in the background of the infamous lesbian kiss scene on the O.C.? Good luck and godspeed! RELATED: Bloodless Coup is the fifth album from the Irish band Bell X1. And similar to their previous works, listening to these songs only makes one wonder what the larger scale American audience is missing. If you […]