BY RONNIE POLANECZKY FISHTOWN ACTION isn’t waiting until May 15 to say whether a casino would be a good thing for the community. The newly minted pro-casino group wants to go on record, right here at Holy Name of Jesus Parish Hall, as being thrilled that SugarHouse Casino wants to build in the neighborhood. In fact, they say, the sooner SugarHouse can bring its 1,100 new jobs to the city, the better. These are jobs offering good salaries, benefits and pensions — and, in many cases, don’t require a college degree. Something not every Fishtowner has, or even wants to […]
LIVE AND DIRECT: Tom Knox For The Deaf
JONATHAN VALANIA REPORTS: Being a rich man trying to buy back City Hall for the common man in a city where the common man holds a profound mistrust of rich men is a fairly thankless job. You can almost see the weight of that burden dragging down the raw-boned, hang-dog face of Tom Knox. Which again brings us back to why anyone would want to be mayor. When your explanation for why you want to be mayor makes people want to ask you again ‘why the hell you want to be mayor?’ — well, you better have deep pockets. Marty […]
What Kind Of Man Reads Phawker? A Loverman!
FUCKIN’ A RIGHT: Andrew WK, First Unitarian, Last Night EVA SAYS: For those of you who know Andrew W.K. as the blood drenched, body thrashing, party maniac responsible for hits such as I Get Wet, We Want Fun and Party Hard –– get ready for a whole new Andrew: Andrew the compassionate humanitarian and spiritual guru. He feels your pain, and he will try to tell you what it all means, too. As if to demonstrate his more refined side, this Andrew opened up his Q&A session with a beautiful classical piano piece first. Then he broke out the idiosyncratic […]
GIMME FICTION: The Manton Chronicles
BY MIKE NEWALL At that time Ronnie Stimola was my next-door neighbor. Ronnie was 33 and lived with his girlfriend Dina in the second-floor apartment of a rowhouse owned by his mother. Ronnie hung around with Gooch Amari. Ronnie and Gooch had been robbing neighborhood grocers on and off since high school. First, the old-school nigger grocers along 7th Street, then the gook take-out stores along Washington Avenue, and then the Mexican grocers that began popping up around 9th Street. It was a couple hundred dollars when they needed it. But then Gooch shot the Mexican in the eye, […]
THIS YOU MUST SEE
Wow.
EARLY WORD: Weimar Republicans
[Click image to activate Internet] More about the Weimar Republic HERE
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even If And Especially When The President Deceives The Nation Into War
FRESH AIR Former CIA chief George Tenet said the Bush administration used him as a scapegoat over intelligence issues with the war in Iraq, and debate among top officials was absent when decisions were made to invade the country. In an interview with CBS’s 60 Minutes to air Sunday night, Tenet discussed claims made in his forthcoming memoir At the Center of the Storm: My Years at the CIA, which focuses in part on his dealings with the Bush administration in the weeks and months leading up to the Iraq war. In the memoir, Tenet expresses frustration with Vice President Dick […]
NOW PLAYING ON PHAWKER RADIO: New Feist
BY DAN DELUCA INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC On a recent shopping Saturday, I found myself in a suburban Banana Republic, a Pine Street photo gallery, and a chichi Center City cafe. I bring this up not merely to establish my credentials as an effete poser, but because Feist was playing in all three places. That’s Leslie Feist, the Canadian indie-pop singer who goes by her last name when making her own music. (She’s also a sometime member of the Toronto collective Broken Social Scene, and used to perform along with electro-rapper Peaches under the name Bitch Lap Lap and sing with […]
LIVE & DIRECT: Michael Nutter For The Deaf
JONATHAN VALANIA REPORTS: Michael Nutter speaks in complete paragraphs, with subsections A., B., and C. and attendant footnotes, which also have their own subsections A., B., and C. He is overflowing with good ideas, not just slogans. Smart, principled, and aspirational. Spidey senses tingling. Is he the The One to lead us out of of the Matrix of our own bullshit? (Spidey senses also warning against crossing metaphors) True, he needs a joke writer or a court jester. (Although he did just describe himself as “just another unemployed guy from West Philly looking for a job.”) His only crime is […]
EATING CROW:Philebrity Retracts PW Sale Story While Blaming PW For Scuttling The PW Sale (Story)
OFFICAL OFFICIAL STATEMENT We here at Philebrity regret that we inadvertently published what has turned out to be false information regarding the sale of the Philadelphia Weekly to Village Voice Media. We initially published, based on what we believed to be a credible tip from a knowledgable source, that a deal was on the table between the two parties. What we could not have predicted and did not know at the time was how far up the corporate ladder the Weekly’s ineffectual, incompetent malaise stretched; we could have never known that at whatever key moment, the Weekly brass would have […]
EVERY DAY THIS WEEK: NPR For The Deaf, LIVE!
Every day this week, Marty Moss-Coane will be devoting an entire hour of Radio Times to one of the five candidates running for mayor, continuing Wednesday with MICHAEL NUTTER at 10 AM. Phawker will be on hand each day, watching her back, observing the men who would be mayor up close and, um, blogging phawking live from the studios of WHYY.