Is Little Pete's Worth Saving?

#savelittlepetes is now a thing. 

As the block home to Little Pete's at 17th and Chancellor will likely be rezoned to accommodate a 12 story Hudson Hotel, the diner's days are numbered. 

However, unlike the 50s-era Letto Deli recently demolished at 13th and Chancellor, Little Pete's iconic 17th Street location is only iconic in its interior and signage, all of which could be moved to another location if management chooses to. 

It could even feasibly be reopened on the ground floor of the new hotel. 

But Bob Skiba, the Gayborhood Guru of Hidden City uncovered a bit of history that will be lost with this unassuming parking garage. Like Letto Deli's location on 13th, Little Pete's was once a Dewey's Famous Diner. While Dewey's on 13th tolerated the Gayborhood's largely LGBT clientele as far back as the 1960s, its 17th location barred "a large number of homosexuals...wearing non-conformist clothing."

Civil protests were certainly not unheard of in the 60s, but four years before the famous Stonewall Riots in New York City -  events that typically mark the beginning of the Gay Rights Movement - 150 men and women staged a protest at Dewey's on 17th in 1965.

That same year, another one of the nation's first gay rights rallies was held at Independence Hall. Known as the Annual Reminder, these pickets were held until 1969 when the movement was moved to Christopher Street in New York City to coincided with that year's Stonewall Riots.

While Dewey's is long gone, the location's significance may perhaps be stronger than ever given recent strides in LGBT rights and marriage equality. Philadelphia is home to a lot of "firsts" but I'd be willing to bet that quite a few, even those active in the LGBT rights movement, know just how integral a role the City of Brotherly love has played. 

Even today, despite conservative politics in Harrisburg and throughout the Commonwealth, Philadelphia continues to lead the nation in progressive policies. From Congressman Brian Sims to the ever vigilant Councilman Jim Kenney, both more concerned with doing what's right than playing politics, we continue to be a city that pushes towards the side of acceptance, even if it's unpopular. For the second year in a row, Philadelphia has tied for first place in LGBT equality.

While we have leaders to thank, like State Attorney Kathleen Kane who refused to defend an unconstitutional ban on gay marriage, we also have a loud and opinionated public that refuses to accept injustice even when it may not coincide with their personal beliefs.

Growing up in the South I'm well versed in the hypocrisy of a region known for its "hospitality." It may seem ironic that Philadelphia, a city reputably rude, would also be so tolerant and accepting. Perhaps its because hospitality and politeness are a farce and rarely have anything to do with recognizing what's just. Anyone who's participated in a protest or sit-in knows how true that is. 

And that's exactly why Dewey's Famous on 17th Street may play a role in history, but as a building, isn't deserved of preservation. 

Our rebellious roots were alive and well in 1965. Philadelphia is no stranger to architectural lost, but we've never lost our way. Little Pete's is just a diner and the Hudson Hotel is no one's civil enemy. Philadelphia is still - and will remain - a city that fights for what's right.

Babette is Out

Babette Josephs, the former Congresswoman who sought to challenge Rep Brian Sims, won't be appearing on the Democratic primary ballot in May. Josephs was defeated by Sims in 2012 bringing her fourteen year reign to an end.

Josephs didn't get the 300 signatures required to appear on the ballot. A significant number of signatures were thrown out when it was determined that the homeless man she hired to go door to door had moved to West Philadelphia, and no longer lived in her district. Ironically she told Philly.com, "It's about the people of the 182nd District and the people of Pennsylvania." It would seem she isn't invested enough in the 182nd District to know that her most important asset didn't even live in it.

Sims, who replaced Josephs in 2012, may not be everyone's favorite. He's a politician first and foremost, but he deviates from the career cronies we are accustomed to watching rise through the ranks abiding by the status quo. 

Sims could easily secure his place as one of Pennsylvania's many career Congressman by doing little more than existing as the reigning Democrat in a heavily Democratic district. But he's active and visible. I don't think he's content with his current position and that's a good thing for Center City. No one hires an employee who doesn't want his boss's job, and I think Sims is eying Washington. It's rare that the Philadelphia region ever has anyone that ambitious.

Paleopolitical Pennsylvania

Former Representative Babette Josephs

Babette Josephs served the Pennsylvania House for fourteen terms, from 1985 to 2012. Not content to retire at age 73, Babette plans to challenge the wildly popular Brian Sims. Sims hasn't just shaken up Harrisburg by challenging the cronies who long for days when Babette Josephs was relevant, shattering the stereotype of the ineffectual freshman, but is quickly becoming a household name in national politics.

Sims is what's right with Pennsylvania's future. Josephs' inability to relinquish three decades of service with dignity - for whatever good she may have done in her time - is indicative of a past that too many Pennsylvania's are terrified of severing. 

Representative Brian Sims

New political blood is a rare treat in a state where prominent newspapers offer up retired mayors as the most hopeful solution to future problems.



As bad as it is that so many Pennsylvanians cling to the dinosaurs in Harrisburg, replacing Sims' fresh potential with Babette Josephs' fossil is a mistake even the most immutable Pennsylvanian can see. If Sims is leaving the Pennsylvania House anytime soon, it's for the Governor's Mansion or Washington.

Philly.com's Christine Flowers

When Christine Flowers isn't playing contrary to logic on Philadelphia's local incarnation of the McLaughlin Group, she's keeping the lights on in the Inquirer's new headquarters by spreading condescending visceral across the virtual pages of Philly.com.

I like smart conservatives. They understand what they believe and why and they respect those who differ. Like intelligent liberals, they know that for a democracy to succeed, a broad range of beliefs need to exist to balance our extremes. I also like stupid conservatives. Like stupid liberals, they're too uninformed to really understand their beliefs, beliefs that are often malleable. Sarah Palin actually seems like a really nice person.

I even find crazy conservatives entertaining. Michele Bachmann and Ted Cruz - despite the billions they cost the country - are hilarious. They keep SNL on the air.

Christine Flowers is none of these things. She's a low budget Anne Counter. A muckraker. She's simply a contrarian. It's not hard to imagine Christine Flowers reporting out of Little Rock with the exact opposite agenda simply because people are more likely to ignore articles that blow smoke up their asses. 

She routinely cites her religious conviction as the foundation for her personal beliefs, as if anyone wants to know where a journalist goes to church. The reason we care about the foundational beliefs of our leaders is because they make our laws. Flowers is a reporter, not a politician, yet she arrogantly assumes her audience is more interested in her own beliefs than those of her subjects.

Even the most opinionated editorials maintain focus, but Flowers is primarily interested in telling us about herself.

Recently she interviewed Rep. Brian Sims, the state's first openly gay Congressman who's grabbed national attention by challenging just about everything that's wrong with politics.

The headline of her article grants Sims a pass as a liberal rival while the article reeks of self promotion and condescension, as if she is somehow Pennsylvania's political litmus test.

Instead of simply reporting on her interview with Sims, she seems to believe that she is allowing him to do his job, that her approval is needed.

She seems to think that momentarily pausing her xenophobic rhetoric is a humanitarian effort, but in doing so only makes her prejudice more obvious.

She might as well say, "I like Brian, he's gay but he doesn't really act gay."

I'm not painting an extreme, and Flowers' bigotry isn't just documented in the gay community. This is the journalist who called America's first Indian-American Miss America, Nina Davuluri, a "Miss Special Interest Group," callously referring to Davuluri's notion of the American Pie as the "Indian-American Samosa."

She even went as far as comparing her own Italian-American heritage to Davuluri's, as if a white woman named Flowers is being routinely stopped by the TSA.

Flowers concluded her article on Davuluri by criticizing Miss America's inspirational comments to minority children. Then Flowers expressed contempt for bigots, thus attempting to absolve herself of any accountability stating, "a plague on both your houses."

If you're going to judge people who comment on their own ethnicity or sexual orientation, stand by your judgments.

She ended her article on her interview with Sims somewhat more amicably, offering him an unsolicited and irrelevant endorsement, "Sims...gained many admirers, including yours truly."

Perhaps there's hope that someone so enamored with Sims' empathetic outlook may find a bit of her own.

Gay History Month: Kick off Marriage Equality in Pennsylvania

As City Hall raised its rainbow flag to kick off Gay History Month, Representatives Brian Sims and Steve McCarter (Philadelphia and Montgomery County) have shown the nation that a federal shut down doesn't stop our state legislature from working for us.

This morning in LOVE Park (how fitting), the two Democratic Representatives introduced H.B. 1686, the Pennsylvania Marriage Equality Act.

With all other states in the NE granting or recognizing same sex marriages, Pennsylvania's sometimes reluctant acceptance is inevitable.

The repeal of DOMA has prompted law suits against the state from couples wed elsewhere. Further complicating matters for Governor Corbett and other conservative holdouts, State Attorney Kathleen Kane has refused to defend a law suit against the state's ban on same sex marriages.

While many have argued that Kane is avoiding her sole duty of upholding the laws of the Commonwealth despite personal opinion, her opinion echoes a growing number of Pennsylvanians, one that now represents the majority of the state.

Some states have legalized same sex marriage by way of popular vote, but the growing notion in Pennsylvania and the country seems to be that marriage recognition is a civil liberty not subject to a state vote.

Gay Businesses Come Out

Philadelphia's impression outside Philadelphia leaves a lot to be desired. That's fine. We're Philadelphians. We're used to it, and we usually get a laugh out of the hate. We might be America's best kept secret. 

You think Philadelphia is that bad? Well, visit, then we can talk.

Nestled between DC and New York, too few bother to see what we're all about. I've had friends back in Virginia ask, "isn't it kind of a big Baltimore?" While I'd prefer "a small New York," Baltimore is nothing to scoff at, kind of like a DC cupcake with more icing and sprinkles.

But this isn't about Baltimore, New York, or DC.

This is about Philadelphia, and how all inclusively awesome we've become. On my way to Home Depot a woman in a burka was tailgating me. As much as her road rage annoyed me, I had an "a ha" moment, realizing she'd likely be profiled in New York, stopped and harassed for more than just a minor traffic violation.

Here, we're free to be. While our grab bag of religious, ethnic, racial, cultural, economic, and societal differences often sparks lively, sometimes offensively charged debates on message boards and blogs, we're free to practice what we want, how we want, and with whom we want.

About a year ago, the Human Rights Campaign placed Philadelphia at the top of its municipal equality index of LGBT equality. With Pennsylvania yet to legalize gay marriage, it says a lot that our municipality received a perfect score, with several bonus points that put us above San Francisco and New York.

This may come as no surprise to us. After all, our city is the only in the United States to brand its Gayborhood with rainbow street signs the way many designate their Chinatowns and Little Italys.

A night out in the Gayborhood might leave visitors wondering why. The "gay scene" in Philadelphia isn't as wild as smaller cities like DC or Portland. With about ten gay bars, some rarely crowded, you might think that Philadelphia is about as gay as Indianapolis...at least if you base inclusiveness solely on our ability to segregate where we drink.

That is where Philadelphia shines. Unlike conservative cities that isolate their gay bars and use them as defacto community centers, we need neither isolation nor therapy from a pint glass. America no longer calculates a city's gayness by its collection of gay bars, and Philadelphia helped make that happen.

We're integrated into mainstream society. Instead of sending a liaison to Harrisburg to help instruct our local Congress on issues in the community, we elected a gay Congressman, the first openly gay Congressman elected in the country.

While City Hall has embraced the gay community as much as any other, until recently the gay community has been relatively invisible on the street. In fact virtually every gay owned business in Washington Square West is fortressed behind a windowless façade.

As one of the first gay businesses to open its windows to the street, Uncles comes out as U-Bar

Many gay bars are still tucked in narrow alleys hidden from the street. Perhaps we never noticed what message this sent being that many of these establishments are so old.

In fact long before organized gay communities began emerging around the country, Philadelphia had already established an underground community in those same alleys, tucked behind theaters amid art clubs, catering to gay clientele in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. 

It's not surprise that the Venture Inn is purportedly the oldest gay bar in operation in the country.

Venture Inn c.1900

Of course, tolerance waxed and waned throughout history and will likely continue to do so. While most people will always be reasonable, any kind of diversity will never be entirely free from bigotry.

For now, things are looking up. While gay men and women step out from the confines of our rainbow clad Gayborhood, businesses in the Gayborhood are coming out themselves.

Perhaps in an effort to combat, or at least coexist with the city's attempt to rebrand the Gayborhood as the more marketable "Midtown Village," Woody's, Icandy, and U-Bar have all replaced their unbranded walls with large windows showing off their renovations.

Improved menus at Tavern on Camac, The Westbury, and Venture Inn have proven that gay bars are more than just places to drink.

It's unfortunate that Philadelphia's gay owned businesses shrouded themselves for so long, particularly in understanding our trailblazing history.

The Midtown Village marketing campaign created an inadvertent, sometimes veiled prejudice towards long time neighborhood businesses. While not directly pointed at the city's gay community, the neighborhood's prior reputation as a slum paired with the fact that so many preexisting businesses were gay, created an inadvertent and false impression that Philadelphia's gay community was somehow seedier or less pronounced as the cushy enclaves of DuPont Circle or The Castro.

This is a misunderstanding. DC's DuPont Circle always struggled with a community association that never embraced its gay community and most of its nightlife has been pushed to the nether regions of the U Street Corridor, ripe with so much development it will likely continue to be pushed further east. Meanwhile San Francisco has become so expensive that its former gay oases serve tourists while locals play in Oakland.

Much the way our Chinatown remains largely authentic, Philadelphia's gay community has been active around Center City's Washington Square West for so long, we're more integrated into our city's soul, despite how it may look to visitors and new residents.

As more gay owned businesses open up to the street, the community's visible presence will increase. While anyone can enjoy the recent developments brought by the Midtown Village campaign, improving the image portrayed by gay owned businesses will hopefully tell gay visitors and locals alike that there's no reason to hide in Philadelphia.