As If The Pumping House Music And Bare-Chested Men Whipping Their Shirts Around Like A Lasso Wasn’t Hint Enough, New Street Signs Spell It Out…

A dedication ceremony was held Wednesday afternoon to unveil street signs to define Philadelphia’s famed “gayborhood.” Singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” a group of about 100 gathered at the corner of 13th and Locust Streets, in the Washington West neighborhood, where one of 36 discreet rainbow signs were unveiled. The sign is the same size as the Locust Street sign and fastened directly beneath it. Tami Sortman is president of the Philadelphia Gay Tourism Caucus: “Philadelphia four years ago started a gay-friendly campaign here to bring gay travelers into the city, and we felt that it was really important for […]

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ONE SENTENCE EDITORIAL: When an angry loner massacres 32 fellow students JUST SO PEOPLE WOULD PAY ATTENTION TO HIM, you only validate his psychotic reasoning by publishing his self-styled assassin’s portrait; you have rewarded a monster with a glory he should never know and, in the process, you invariably create more just like him.

Stop it! HARRY SHEARER: What is the possible journalistic explanation for splashing Cho’s self-dramatizing poses and self-justifying bullshit over network and cable air? Did we learn anything useful during the spate of interviews of Charlie Manson years ago, except that he was one crazy motherfucker? Cho’s pathetic outpourings deserved to be put back where they came from–in a small room, with FBI guys sentenced to read/see and parse them Instead, a hundred thousand self-pitying mentally ill young men (and women?) have just been shown the road to glory one more time. A society in which it’s easier to become famous […]

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TODAY I SAW…

BY JEFF DEENEY “Today I saw…” is a series of nonfiction shorts based on my experiences as a caseworker serving formerly homeless families now living in North and West Philadelphia. I decided not long after starting the job that I was seeing so many fascinating and disturbing things in the city’s poorest neighborhoods that I needed to start cataloging them. I hope this bi-weekly column serves as a record of a side of the city that many Philadelphians don’t come in contact with on a daily basis. I want to capture moments not frequently covered by the local media, which […]

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EARLY WORD: My Fleeting House

Tim Buckley was an experimental vocalist and performer who incorporated jazz, psychedelia, funk, soul, and avant-garde rock in a short career spanning the late 1960s and early 1970s. He often regarded his voice as an instrument, a talent most exploited on his albums Goodbye and Hello, Lorca, and Starsailor. He was the father of musician and singer Jeff Buckley, also known for his three-and-a-half octave voice, who died in 1997. Buckley released his debut album Tim Buckley on Elektra in 1966. A folk-rock album, it contained psychedelic melodies written with input from Beckett. He went on to release Goodbye and […]

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KILLADELPHIA: Meet Akbar The Fireman MC — Savin’ Little Kittens In Trees, Wastin’ Pigs, Keepin’ It Real

The Fraternal Order of Police is burned up over a local firefighter’s saying he wanted to “turn pigs into bacon bits” in the lyrics of a rap song he wrote. So, in this post-Imus age, when the police union did not get the apology it was expecting yesterday, it called for the immediate firing of Rodney Jean-Jacques, 30, who moonlights as rapper Cal Akbar. Jean-Jacques remains on the payroll at Engine Company 9 in Mount Airy. The matter is under investigation, according to Philadelphia Fire Commissioner Lloyd Ayers and a spokesman for Mayor Street. Philadelphia Fire Fighters Union Local 22 […]

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LIVE ACTS: Mad Shit Going Down At The Mann, Yo

BY AMY Z. QUINN There are moments — say, on a swampy summer evening when Lucinda Williams’ between-song patter is accented by the rumble of August thunder, or when you’re 17 and dancing at an REM concert instead of at your Senior mixer — when the Mann Center for the Performing Arts is a magical place. And yeah, in recent years the quality of the acts booked at the Fairmount Park venue was spotty at best, but don’t blame that all on the Tweeter Center. Because fact is, no matter how good the performer, the biggest problem with the Mann […]

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GUNCRAZY: Peace Through Superior Firepower?

IT’S THE GUNS EVEN THOUGH we know more than we did Monday about who was responsible for the horrific carnage at Virginia Tech, the details are still unfolding, and so is the public discussion that tries to find sense or lessons in this tragedy.What we do know: The innocent young people who were slaughtered were not even finished being identified, and their families notified, before gun- rights advocates were broadcasting their specious argument, the same argument they used after the shooting of 10 students in an Amish school in Lancaster just six months ago: Forget controls on gun ownership, this […]

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NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t

FRESH AIR Journalist Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe just won a Pulitzer Prize for national-affairs reporting. In an April 2006 article, he detailed how often President Bush has used “signing statements” to assert the right to bypass provisions of new laws; Savage’s article prompted Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA) to call for hearings investigating the matter. Instead of vetoing bills, Savage reported, Bush has quietly used “signing statements” — official documents in which a president lays out his legal interpretation of a bill to be followed when implementing a new law. Other presidents have also used this power, but Bush […]

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