Save Sriracha

When it comes to things Americans enjoy, particularly our vices, the government can't move fast enough to stop it. Of course things like smoking, drinking, pot, and transfat are unhealthy habits that probably deserve at least some level of public regulation.

But what happens when the government misses the mark? Instead of looking at thirty years of production history, the government looks at the public's overwhelming interest in a product, their addiction to it, and immediately treats it like heroin.

That's an exaggeration, of course, but an exaggeration of what the California government is doing to Huy Fong Foods' wildly popular Sriracha sauce.

Although previous complaints by neighbors shut down Huy Fong's Irwindale, CA factory in November, California regulators have stepped up their efforts to shut Huy Fong down, or at least drive it out of the state.

According to Anita Gore from the California health department, new FDA regulations applied just last year will have an impact on raw foods. Since Sriracha isn't cooked, and is a natural food containing no additives or preservatives, it could be prone to bacterial growth.

It's kind of ironic that a state that prides itself on the natural and organic is trying to shut down a product that has been natural and organic for thirty years, and widely available.

One has to wonder why regulators are pressing Huy Fong Foods and no other hot sauce makers, most of which contain uncooked and raw ingredients as well. Is California's decision to suspend Huy Fong Foods' operations a good intentioned provision of new FDA requirements, or is it simply another knee-jerk reaction by government suits to put an end to something that's just a little bit too enjoyable?

More Decadence for the Mummers Parade

A year ago, the irrelevant Philadelphia Metro Task Force, from the even more mythical Saint David's, PA, was distressed that the Mummers Association decided to allow "a dance troupe that is known as sexually transgender" to perform in the annual parade.

If you've ever seen the Mummers strut up Broad Street on New Years Day, clad in bedazzled dresses and large feather headdresses, you understand how absurd the Task Force's statement really is.

I mean to the unfamiliar, one would likely wonder why the Philadelphia Gay Pride Parade took place on New Years morning. The drunken orgy of hot glue and sequins puts our annual Pride Parade to shame. In fact, if the Mummers strutted (a term that might even be too gay for drag queens to use) in the balmy summer they'd undoubtedly be just as scanty clad as the twinks atop Woody's float in June, although they'd probably look more like the boys from the Bike Stop.

Of course the Mummers Association unequivocally ignored the Task Force's letter of concern, stating that the Mummers Drag Brigade was a fine way to attract a broader audience.

Mummers LGBT Liaison Committee
When I first saw this picture on Facebook, I couldn't decide who looked more awkward, our city's drag queens or our city's leaders. Then I realized that our city's people working together is exactly what makes Philadelphia such an amazingly embracing place. Bravo, ladies and gentlemen.
 

This year the Mummers Parade will again host drag queens and now, drag kings. To the folks at PMTF, there is a difference between a drag queen and a "sexually transgender" person. Watch Too Wong Foo, Wesley Snipes has a great monologue that explains it all.

What drag queens and drag kings do isn't much different than every other Mummer in the parade's century long history. They put on make up and they perform. But how one identifies shouldn't matter in a parade that brings all Philadelphians together, and it doesn't matter to the Mummers Association. And that's fabulous.

In respect to history, female impersonators regularly participated in the Mummers Parade into the 1970s when women were allowed to participate. Councilman Jim Kenny, who's been a champion of LGBT causes in Philadelphia, helped bring the queens back to the Mummers Parade after their last appearance in 1989.

Is this the W Hotel?

With all the construction buzz around town - the FMC tower and the Grove completing Cira Centre's original plan and carrying the skyline across the Schuylkill River, Dranoff's SLS International Hotel, talk of high rise or two at the Girard Trust Block - Inquirer Architecture Critic Inga Saffron might be faced with more subject matter than she's seen since 2005, and it's wonderful.


W Element Hotel? Maybe.

Still, little has been said of the still-vacant lot at 15th and Chestnut, once the proposed location for a Waldorf-Astoria and now a W Hotel. Rumors of talks and tax incentives have found their way online, but little has been officially released.

A cute and very preliminary rendering showed up on SkyscraperCity a few days ago showing a glass tower roughly the same height as City Hall. Dubbed the W Element Hotel, the rendering is very simple, but worth a look.

SLS International Hotel

News broke today that Carl Dranoff's SLS International Hotel and Condo at Broad and Spruce is all but a done deal. And at 47 stories and 562 feet, it's tall. Like taller than William Penn, tall.

Dranoff Properties released Kohn Pedersen Fox architects' initial renderings of the sleek tower and it's an exciting departure from Dranoff's other properties. Construction is planned to start in 2014.

Kohn Pedersen Fox

Kenny Gamble, of the legendary Gamble and Huff and Philadelphia International Records, sold the current building to Carl Dranoff.

Despite the loss of the landmark building, South Broad Street will also be losing a vacant gravel lot.

Kohn Pedersen Fox

The hotel's name pays homage to Philadelphia International Records and vested parties have hinted that more than the namesake will pay tribute to Gamble and Huff, Philadelphia International Records, and Mayor Wilson Goode, whose offices were once in the current building.

Preservation Alliance's Endangered Properties

Curbed Philly put together a nice map of the Preservation Alliance of Greater Philadelphia's endangered properties list. With seventeen sites threatened, all undeniably significant or downright amazing, it means that Philadelphians either host too much history to care, or that the Historical Commission of Philadelphia doesn't care.

It's probably a little of both. Few American cities host as much built history as Philadelphia. Smaller cities preserve their history in lieu of growing while New York and Chicago have demolished much of their history due to market demands. Saturated with so much history, Philadelphians can take it for granted.

However, that makes the city's Historical Commission that much more important. Instead of existing solely to pass out demolition permits, the Commission's job in a city as historic as Philadelphia is to protect the city's history. That doesn't mean simply saving what developers are willing to save, but lobbying the city for funds, creating programs to assist with restoration, and being the voice of preservation.

The Alliance's list, which doesn't just include landmarks like Lynnewood Hall and the Divine Lorraine, but also unconventional sites like the SS United States and others that many consider insignificant like the Roundhouse.

Despite the Historical Commission's ineptitude, practices that run entirely counter to the commission's purpose, it's nice that Philadelphia is home to many nonprofit organizations willing to do the commission's job. Unfortunately without the city's support these organizations are only able to address dire situations setting themselves up for failure. Perhaps the Historical Commission should be abolished and the Preservation Alliance of Philadelphia contracted in its place.

SEPTA Concourse Improvements

Have you ever enter SEPTA's Broad Street concourse, or any part of the city's cavernous underground, and felt the impending doom of the subway scene from The Wiz?

While you might curse SEPTA for your fears, frustrations, and that urine smell, SEPTA actually doesn't manage the concourses, the city's Department of Public Property does.

That's about to change, and improve. The state's recently approved transportation funding has put SEPTA in a position to beef up its system, and the transit organization is seeking to take over management of the city's underground concourses.



Wanamaker's display window on the Market Street subway concourse

What's more interesting than simply cleaning the vast space, SEPTA is even considering retail additions to its more prominent corners of the underground. For decades Wanamaker's Department Store had several displayed windows along the Market Street's concourse, even entrances long since shuttered. Perhaps we may soon see them reopened.

Free Library's eBook Kiosk

PlanPhilly

America's first public library added another first to Philadelphia's history. PlanPhilly reported this week that the Free Library's virtual library at Suburban Station is the nation's first of the kind.

Libraries around the world have been struggling for a while, competing with the internet, the disposable cost of books, and now ebooks. It's a shame, but it's a problem that should have been addressed decades ago. Now that big box bookstores have been rendered irrelevant by ebooks and Amazon.com, libraries are trying to sustain a model that has been lapped by the market's evolution numerous times.

Unfortunately it's tricky. A library's most noted purpose is actually supplemental. It's easy to look at a library as a failing business and say, "it's not making money, people get books elsewhere, just close it." But libraries are neither businesses nor designed to generate revenue. They largely exist as regional archives, banks of information that - believe it or not - is not available online, and museums to posterity. They've never been sustained by late fees, only governments dedicated to that posterity.

In that regard, a library system's main obstacle is public perception. The Free Library of Philadelphia has taken an important step in the right direction with its virtual library kiosk at Suburban Station. It finally ignores decades of failure and charges headfirst into the here and now, offering readers exactly what they're looking for.

In an increasingly virtual world, buildings matter less. Of course Philadelphia's remaining library branches will continue to offer readers physical books and quiet places for research, particularly at it's prominent Logan Square location. But offering readers a free, membership based alternative to downloading ebooks at cost, it reminds readers that libraries exist.