A New North Broad

Thanks to Fishtown's resident do-goodery, a dynamic entertainment complex was dumbed down to trashy slot barn. Well we've got a second chance, and this time backed by a developer with a proven record of spinning crap into gold. 

Bart Blatstein owns the State Office Building and the Inquirer Building on North Broad, and sees it as the prime spot for a massive venue, a private venture that would rival if not surpass the nearby Pennsylvania Convention Center. That's right, a casino can and should be much more than a casino.

Knee jerk NIMBYism is already calling for the head of anyone supporting this. Why? "We don't need another casino!" They're absolutely right. We don't. These chronic complainers have pointed out that we already have SugarHouse and several casinos in the suburbs. Their point is entirely valid. Our existing casinos struggle, what's the point of building another? 

Here's the point: convention space, theaters, night clubs, restaurants, hotels, and a boatload of other amenities that come with successful casinos. These underhanded dicks have conveniently left all of that out, and here's how they kill all of those resources: 

Convince everyone that Mr. Burns will be sitting in the clock tower skinning puppies while thousands of expectant mother's cash in their unborn child's college funds below. "Please, won't somebody think of the children?!" 

The very reason Philadelphia allowed table games was to entice investors into building something more than a slot barn. SugarHouse tried to offer that, but a group of (vaguely) neighboring ass holes forced the lowest common denominator, then blamed it on the developer! 

Let's not NIMBY this plan down to a crappy little slot barn, or worse, another parcel of vacant buildings. 

Barely Human(itarians): Food Not Bombs

It may seem counter-intuitive to criticize a charitable organization, particularly one aimed at feeding the city's many homeless. But that's what makes Food Not Bombs and its informal President so reprehensible. Food Not Bombs doesn't feed the homeless, but rather exploits the homeless in an effort to make loosely related political statements.

Recently the organization has been asked to discontinue its feedings in front of the Family Court Building and 20th and Vine, an action FNB immediately used to slander the city, claiming prioritizing tourism was a soulless act. 


The decision had nothing to do with tourism. The truth of the matter is the city has no way of insuring that the feedings are safe because FNB refuses to get a permit, which they proudly profess on their website:


We refuse to get a permit for our servings; we believe nobody needs permission to share food with those in need.


If you're sitting in your dorm smoking pot, this premise might sound nice enough, but this permit is required for any large gatherings in a public park from protests to family reunions.


The group's motives don't sound quite as idealistic when you consider they admittedly parade the homeless in an effort to protest issues entirely unrelated to hunger, including funding for the police department. 


Most recently the group, along with Occupy Philadelphia, protested the opening of the Barnes Museum. Only they weren't protesting the same drama the museum is accustomed to, they were protesting the gala itself. 


Somehow philanthropy is now sinful. As those who helped bring one of the world's most astonishing museums to the Parkway dined (with the proper permits from the city), the FNB and Occupy Philadelphia illegally fed a line of homeless across the street in an attempt to gross everyone out.


Again, there isn't anything inherently wrong with feeding the homeless, if you are genuinely dedicated to helping the homeless. But 20th and Vine is only equipped to exploit the homeless and there is nothing humane about that. 


There are no public facilities, it is no where near a shelter, and FNB is affiliated with no organizations that attempt to rehabilitate the homeless. FNB feeds them, makes what they perceive to be a point, and then releases them to sleep along the Vine Street Expressway, Sister Cities Park, or the steps of the library. 


FNB is a Homeless Advocacy Group in every sense of the phrase, literally advocating for homelessness. 


Should we just be a city of satiated homeless? Should we snub grant money and donations earmarked for museums and fountains because one group thinks it's better to spent elsewhere? Remember when volunteering or donating to a charitable organization was a good thing? Remember when it was politically correct to be happy? 


We can't help everybody, and we certainly can't help them by dwelling on the fact that the most obvious improvements are going to be those that make the biggest tax payers happy to live here.  


Protesting a fundraiser that helped bring priceless art into the eyes of millions of Philadelphians who would never otherwise see such a space, that is a soulless act. Using the homeless - living people - to make that point, that is barely human. 


There are hundreds of charitable volunteer organizations in the city dedicated to helping the homeless, most of which not only feed them, but offer them the tools to feed themselves. FNB is associated with none of these.

The Philly Bully

Welcome to Philadelphia, where the cost of fair business ends in fist fights, loose asbestos, and bottles of urine. At least that's what Philadelphia Building Trades Union would like developers to think. Philadelphia's union muscle has been a notorious thorn in the real estate market since their mid-century heyday, but unwavering support may not be as stable as most perceive. The reality of it all, which is increasingly evident, is that these unions are dealt with as a necessary evil. Developers either try to fly below their radar or are wealthy enough to afford them. However they're dealt with, picket signs and protest are routine.


 But that might be changing. Instead of ignoring the tactics employed by this union, which have included vandalism, slander, and even threats towards relatives, Post Brothers has charged at them head first. Post Brothers seemed content allowing the police to deal with much of the union member's illegal behavior, that is until a call placed to Councilman Kenny led L&I to shut down the site. Apparently some people were suspicious that employees were not being paid fairly. 


Councilman Kenny, I feel that some city employees are overpaid. Where is the investigation on my behalf?


Michael Pestronk of Post Brothers accused Councilman Kenny of spot zoning and caving to political pressure, an accusation that the mayor's office denied. 


Mayor Nutter's office might want to choose teams more wisely. Post Brothers will be going before Judge Leon Tucker with enough surveillance footage, photographs, and falsified propaganda to make anyone teamed up with this union look like they work for the mob.


Post Brothers posted their own side of the story, comparing statistics on their own business practices to the union's. Some of the facts may surprise you. They also posted their surveillance videos and a number of slanderous and threatening fliers distributed throughout the city.  


Here are some facts you may have thought you already knew:

• 75% of Post Brothers employees reside and pay taxes in Philadelphia.
• 70% of Building Union's workforce lives outside Philadelphia County, including Delaware and New Jersey

• 65% of Post Brothers employees are minorities, representative of the city's 55%.
• 91% of Carpenter Union members are white.

• Post Brothers employs 2% more union members than the average percentage of building union members employed in Philadelphia.

The Strand East

How many frustrated white people does it take to assemble a town with hex keys and mashed potato board? We'll soon find out. The Swedish retailer, IKEA, is building an entire neighborhood in East London. I'm just hoping that the buildings will have names like Linberpank and Krud.


It's called The Strand East. I'm not sure why. I'm not going to bother to Bablefish it. I'm sure it's a nonsensical Scandanavian word. It couldn't possibly, simply mean "strand."


Beyond the absurd imagery that comes from an entire town made out of IKEA furniture, the endless jokes you could make about quality of construction, the most humorous quality might be in the cliched rhetoric that reads straight from the Yupster's Bible (Yes, I combined Hipsters and Yuppies).


As if a town built entirely by the capital of obscure mainstream wasn't enough to appeal to the organic breast milk ice cream eating British trendies, the town will be devoid of cars and operate on hydroelectric power. Its most entertaining feature might be the organically shaped "creative zone intended for creative-minded businesses." In other words the designers had some space left over and didn't know what to do with it so they filled it in with some buzz words.

An open, organically shaped public space? Isn't that the same Rogerian philosophy that gave us all the UFO buildings built in the 60s and 70s? Those circular schools with one hallway that had no beginning or end? I've literally had nightmares about Wynne Hall at Longwood College. 


Every room was "organic" as to allow for "creative and collective debate." You know what they found out? People don't like organic spaces. They like sitting in a row in a square room with a clearly defined front and back. Even in art class. 


You know what you get in one undefined organic "creative space" without a leader? You certainly don't get "creative-minded businesses." You get a crowd of angry, unbathed idiots talking about how great anarchy is. 


Oh, and I almost forgot. This throw back to our bat shit crazy mid-Century attempts to rewrite a concept as old as homo-sapiens - civilization - wouldn't be complete without some completely Jetsonian, quasi-futuristic oddities. 


Like the moving sidewalks and push button kitchen cabinetry the 1950s promised we'd see everywhere by now, The Strand East will remove trash from its units with a series of vacuum tubes a lot like the ones used at your bank's drive through window. Hang on to your animals and small children. Sometimes it's just easier to take out the trash yourself.


The one good thing about IKEAville is it's cheap, and when it melts in the rain, its entire replacement comes in a box designed specifically to fit into your 1988 Saab 900.

Philadelphia's Doing Just Fine

Daniel Stone's Daily Beast article isn't painful to read because it points out Philadelphia's flaws. It isn't annoying because he refers to Urban Outfitters as an "older, legacy" company. It isn't even annoying that his familiarity with Philadelphia is limited to cheesesteaks. 


No, the thing that annoys me about Daniel Stone and the Daily Beast (which makes the Huffington Post look boringly objective) is that he used a single study (conducted by Philadelphia's own Pew) and an apocalyptic photo of our skyline to make Philadelphia sound like it was a recently Utopian reserve now barely clinging to a cliff a few miles above Hell.

Hell

I'm not even going to begin to detail the inaccuracies in his assertions. They have all been beautifully summarized in Patricia Kerkstra's Inquirer article, here. You can also find more reliable and inclusive information in the comments section of Stone's article, usually reserved for misinformed rants that sound a lot like the article itself. 


As pathetic as this article is, there's silver in the muck he's raking. The fact that bloggers like Stone are citing Philadelphia's woes as a way to make them feel better about their free falling investments in cities like New York and Washington means that Philadelphia, even with our problems, has arrived. 


Twenty years ago, pretentious snobs in the Silicone Valley thought that Philadelphia was a little city "somewhere in Pennsylvania." Today our purported plight is national news, leaving us scratching our heads and wondering how this is newsworthy. After all, Philadelphia today is the Bizarro World's opposite of Philadelphia in 1992. And we're humble about that. 


So many other cities are populated with people that love to claim their home is the greatest place in the world. San Franciscans can't get enough of themselves, New York is "the center of the universe," and DC is still a little town on the Potomac bankrolled by the rest of the country full of so much ego it makes Los Angeles look genuine. 


But Philadelphia is a funny place. We know we're dirty, we kind of like it. I find myself defending Philadelphia weekly from blind hatred around the world, usually ceding with, "well, I like the grit." 


We know we're dangerous, we know we're poor, and we know we have nothing to prove (except when it comes to sports). So many other places are just as poor and just as dangerous, yet they profess to be bastions of perfection and idealism. 


We embrace our flaws and maybe that's what pisses people off. We're diverse, truly diverse, and we like it. Other cities like Portland love to tout their liberal ideology of tolerance; but black, white, green, or orange, they're all upper middle class Judeo-Christians that drive Jettas. San Franciscans are free to criticize Philadelphia's socioeconomic diversity as soon as they start carrying Oakland on their shoulders. 


We put up with a lot of shit in Philadelphia, shit that douche bags like Stone could never put up with. Instead of extending us props for being the most tolerant grab bag of DNA in the country, they tell us we're poor, ugly, sick, and teetering on the brink of self-destruction. 


We truly are bad ass. Chicks dig us. Guys want to be us. And the losers at the dork table can't stand that we set the bar for cool. 


Philadelphians aren't dealing with anything we weren't dealing with 20 years ago. In fact we're doing better, but I'm a Philadelphian so I don't need no brag. If you're reading this from you iPad in Griffith Park you can go online and see, like you, we're doing fine in some places and not so fine in others. That's right, Philadelphia is a big city. 


We've got some rich people, some poor people, some smart people, some stupid people. We've got big business and small business, good business and bad business. 


What's more, compared to most major metropolitan areas we fared the recession significantly better for the simple fact that we didn't try to be New York. We weathered the recession because we ignored the balloon. After all, we're too cool to be Park Slope South.


While Miami tries to figure out what to do with their forest of uninhabited skyscrapers and San Francisco smugly ignores the fact that they hid their poor people in the suburbs, Philadelphians are pioneering the revitalization of new neighborhoods and topping global lists for parks, museums, singles, food, and everything in between. 


Sounds like a death spiral to me, Daniel Stone.

Post Brothers Apartments

While a handful of protesters continue to picket the rehabilitation of the infamous "Graffiti Building" at 12th and Wood, Post Brothers has unveiled a sign of their own.


Today, a giant banner hung from one of the top floors of the long neglected warehouse read "Post Brothers Apartments," signifying development is moving full steam ahead unphased by Philadelphia's Union Muscle.


For months, a rotating collection of Colorform laden signage spouted accusations that Post Brothers were "destroying community standards" to commuters along 12th Street.


I'd personally like to say thank you Post Brothers for investing in MY community's standards.

City says Divine Lorraine will not be demolished

A "Repair or Demolish" notification posted by L&I delivered a second punch to preservationists following a fire at the Divine Lorraine, abandoned by investors.


Fear not. Deputy Mayor Alan Greenberger stated that the notification was a necessary measure allowing the city to enter the building and intervene.


A bill for all repairs made by the city will be sent to the building's owners, Michael Treacy, Jr. and a Dutch group, on top of the $700,000 in back taxes they currently owe.


Meanwhile the city is working with the New York bank that holds the mortgage to find a new owner ready and willing to develop the property.