Pearl Street Painting

Callowhill's Pearl Street got a bit of a facelift the other day. By facelift, I mean it got a fresh coat of paint, and by that, I mean the actual street got painted.

I have no idea where it came from, if it's an art installation, some kind of nod to Callowhill's Viaduct Park ambitions, or a promotional stunt by Post Brothers.

The color is pretty close to the green used in Post Brother's Goldtex Apartments.

Whoever did it and why, it looks pretty damn cool. The street (more like an alley) is mostly unused and lined with nothing of note, so the paint adds a splash of color the way a Favela Painting camouflages the slums of Rio.

But hey, whatever works. Check it.

Friends of the Rail Park

Some new renderings have emerged from OLIN Studio for Callowhill's should-be Reading Viaduct Park as well as some for a City Branch Rail Park, this time opening up City Branch's tunnels to the sky.

Commissioned by Friends of the Rail Park, formerly ViaductGreene, the renderings are highly conceptual, integrating the School District Administration Building and former Inquirer Building.

OLIN Studio

At this stage in the process, this gives us a clever idea of what a rail trail park through our historic industrial district might look like. However, park advocates shouldn't get too excited about the potential reuse of property that private developers don't really control.

Friends of the Rail Trail should be commended for their recent strides, and advocates are finally headed in the right direction. In the past, ViaductGreene has been a loosely knit organization comprised of members with AutoCAD skills and a knack for getting people talking. While they managed to get neighbors involved in the discussion, they never really managed to rally any key decision makers.

Obviously, a large chunk of the neighborhood supports the project. So much so, many were willing to approve a tax increase for the Callowhill neighborhood to support park maintenance well before anything would have happened.

At this point, the property's piece meal ownership poses the biggest obstacle, particularly the portion owned by the mysterious Reading Company. The Reading Company owns the elevated portion that snakes its way through the neighborhood east of Broad. While the company largely exists as a portfolio of defunct rail lines, it's unclear whether ownership even knows of the plans for their property.

OLIN Studio

While the Inquirer Building's owner, Bart Blatstein is open to the idea, he has acknowledged SEPTA's vested interest in the property as well.

The City Planning Commission has expressed some resistance to the concept, citing the potential return of transit to the City Branch portion of the rail. It's a reasonable concern, one Leah Murphy, board member of Friends of the Rail Park acknowledged as well.

Even if it takes fifty years for transit to return to the City Branch line, these lines were established when the surrounding environment was being developed. Subways and dedicated rail lines are hard if not impossible to build in an established city, which is why newer cities opt for surface rails. The City Branch line and even the Reading Viaduct is a unique asset that, despite the fact that we don't use them, would be difficult to reestablish as a rail line after they find alternate use.

OLIN Studio

The Planning Commission has mentioned using the land as a bus line, which Murphy points out could run in tandem with a City Branch park. Park advocates remain optimistic that the line could be used as a park, at least until the city drafts realistic plans to establish some form of transit in the vicinity.

A City Branch Park and a Reading Viaduct Park remain highly speculative, although City Branch's once experimental proposal for an enclosed, underground park, now open to the elements seems more realistic than plans for the Viaduct. Not necessarily because it's more or less desirable, but because it's clear where advocates stand with the land, and who actually owns it.

Until the Reading Company becomes more than a Wikipedia page, the Reading Viaduct, at least its elevated portions east of 12th Street will remain a place reserved for those with a trespassing sense of adventure.

Leah Murphy and Friends of the Rail Trail are moving in the right direction, even if an uphill battle lies before them. Working with adjacent development, the City Planning Commission, and SEPTA, as well as a willingness to work with other potential ideas is the way to go.

Another subway surface line carrying passengers from Center City to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Fairmount Park, Centennial Park, and the Philadelphia Zoo is a dreamy proposal, but one that simply isn't in the cards at the moment.

Why not open it up as a park for now? Bring more people to this colorful, sometimes bizarrely forgotten pocket of what is practically Center City, entice residents with something more than parking lots and weeds, and put some pedestrians on the ground who might someday look for a train to take them beyond.

Evo on the River

The Grove at 30th and Chestnut will be opening in the fall of 2014, and if you haven't gotten your skyscraper fix from the tallest student housing in the United States, Brandywine Realty Trust and Campus Crest aren't done.

When you think student housing, Campus Crest wants you to think vertically, which is why their Cira Centre South project isn't complete. With 33 floors already under construction, Campus Crest is aiming even higher on Walnut Street.

Remaining cryptic and making no official statements, Campus Crest does have the capital to build. With no neighborly resistance to development on the west bank on the Schuylkill River, University City and Campus Crest have been free to dabble in experimental design, tall design, free of community intervention.

Union Muscle? Hit the gym, you're playing with the big boys.

It looks like the nonsense at the site of Post Brother's Goldtex Apartments isn't going to end until its tenants are hanging their curtains. While the Firefighter's Union actually opened up a legitimate concern, an easily addressable issue, the city's trade unions continue on their own route to derail construction outside any scope of logic, or at least carry out a few last ditch attempts.

You know the throngs of protesters that routinely block moving traffic in and out of the site? The traffic moving at about a mile an hour behind the crowd of New Jersey muscle waving poorly worded banners about "Community Standards"? The hoards of white guys who criticized the presence of a few Asian construction workers who clearly couldn't be local, you know, in Chinatown?



COMING SOON, whether you like it or not.


The Building and Trades Council has decided to take a security guard to court for no less than six counts of criminal activity, allegedly trying to run over some of the protesters.

With claims like aggravated assault and reckless endangerment, The Building and Trades Council is trying to project a "we're not messing around" image, flexing their muscles. We've all seen them sitting on the side of Vine Street guarding their frownie faced signs. That muscle atrophied years ago.

Anyone with an ounce of reason knows what this is: The Building and Trades Council's pathetic attempt to stave off development for another week or two by forcing the Post Brothers into another frivolous court battle.

With all the eyes on the site, both from the petty union members sitting outside with their camera phones and Post Brothers' security system rivaling Fort Knox, it's pretty obvious that the case will wind up just being another headache for the Post Brothers which could still get tossed out.

At worst it's a costly battle for both parties, including The Building and Trades Union who seems more vested in wasting money trying to bankrupt a nearly complete project than actually finding its members work.

How the Media Missed Miss Amercia

When Miss New York, Nina Davuluri won the Miss America crown, most of America missed the point.

I'm not talking about all the racist trolls baiting the internet from the anonymity they found under a bridge. BuzzFeed has done a fine job calling them out by their Twitter names likely to bring them fifteen minutes of fame before their teachers and parents find out what they've been saying.

Sure, some will get support from the redder necked parts of the hate states, but for every nasty comment retweeted or recounted in an article, there are hundreds of comments calling them out as the disgusting bags of garbage that they are.

What I'm talking about is the media itself and the fact that most outlets have decided to highlight the hate in their comment feeds rather than discuss who Nina Davuluri actually is.

Let's face it, a lot of us didn't follow the pageant. Had Miss (some white girl) won, many of us would have awoken Monday morning unaware that the pageant had even taken place.

Instead we woke to Facebook comments and articles all decrying the seemingly endless anger over Davuluri's win. Many nameless commenters called her "Arab," as if that should matter. Some even called her a terrorist. According to CNN, it would seem that most of America was wondering why a "foreigner" won Miss America. The last thing any media outlet bothered to tell us anything about was Nina Davuluri, the woman who won. 

Our own Philadelphia Inquirer called her win a "controversial reign."

What's controversial? Did the audience at the pageant stand and boo? Was the election rigged? Is the fact that she looks like millions of other ethnically diverse Americans controversial?

Or is the fact that the media allows a platform for race baiting, encouraging comments as a means to sell advertising, controversial? Is the fact that media outlets are pretending to be dumfounded that these racists exist controversial?

The media is certainly fanning the flames to their own advantage.

One local columnist went as far as to criticize Davuluri for some of the comments she made following her win, paraphrasing the newly crowned beauty queen's remarks towards children who "finally, would feel as if they had a piece of the Indian-American samosa simply because the lady in the sash looked like them."

Christine Flowers of the Daily News actually said that, and the newspaper printed it.

Flowers went as far as to compare her own Italian-American identity - in Philadelphia -  to that of an ethnicity many people, if trollish comments are to be believed, equate with terrorism.

There's a reason Davuluri's victory is significant, and that reason is evident in the comments on Philly.com, CNN.com, and Twitter. Those children she's speaking to, those who face that kind of hatred and bigotry in the classroom, are what makes her victory significant.

To decry Davuluri's message to children who face hate every day, hate they don't even understand, as some kind of reverse racism is to embrace the fallacy that reverse racism exists. To claim that being Italian-American creates a common bond with those institutionally discriminated against displays a complete lack of empathy and understanding of the world we live in, particularly when placed against the backdrop of the hateful comments levied against Davuluri.

Of all professions, these are things a reporter should understand.

As a Greek-American raised in a hate state I merely struggled with a last name few people knew how to pronounce. For Flowers, a Sopranos joke here and there cannot possibly translate into the kind of prejudice Indian-Americans, Middle Eastern-Americans, and African-Americans face everywhere, every day.

Get real. The fallacy of a post-racial America has been exhausted, disproven by the comments below any online article in the world, any article a journalist like Christine Flowers has ever posted.

That's why Nina Davuluri's win is significant. That's why her message to the young girls she understands, sympathizes with, and relates to, is even more significant.

And that's why journalists like Flowers need a reality check, or need to pass the story to someone who gets it. Someone who can tell us something about Nina Davuluri instead of using her job as a place to explore her own insecurities.

More Heat for Post Brothers

Post Brothers are receiving heat again with claims from the city's unions, aided by a hackneyed investigation on the part of ABC's Wendy Saltzman.

I have to give it to Saltzman for doing her job. After all, the mainstream media is in the business of running stories that accumulate comments that translate into advertisement, not peddling that annoying little thing called journalism. Nothing gets people talking in Philadelphia like unions, and any reporter in Philadelphia worth her words has a Google alert set for "Goldtex Apartments."

The tactics to derail Post Brother's Goldtex project have become increasingly tedious and technical as the building nears completion, however this time the claims are not completely erroneous.

Although the blueprints were approved years ago by L&I, the city's firefighter's union president, Joe Schulle has filed a legitimate concern.

Unions stick together, but the recent complaint filed with L&I may not be part of our unions' mafia-like solidarity that tends to bring construction to a halt.

So what's the problem? Well, that's not entirely clear.

The plans approved by L&I show the building's studio units with lofts above the bathroom and closet. Access to the loft is by way of a pull down staircase that blocks the unit's only entrance. Plain and simple, it's a fire hazard. When L&I approved the plans the loft space was strictly designated as storage or utility space.

Unfortunately, Goldtex Apartment's sales reps are selling the space as extra living space. Let's be realistic here, that's what they were going for all along and how any tenant would use the space. L&I might not be in the business of marketing apartment units, but they should have a rigid set of guidelines that dictates that any space, utility or otherwise needs to be easily escapable.

It was shortsighted of L&I to approve this configuration, but also shortsighted on the part of the architects. Access to the loft could be easily configured to the right or left of the apartment's entrance. L&I should have pointed that out when they reviewed the plans, and the Post Brothers and their architects should have complied.

At Post Brother's eleventh hour it poses a last minute headache that would be minimal to any other developer. But for developers embroiled in an ongoing battle with the city's trade unions, and now the firefighter's union, the media has turned an easily addressable issue into breaking news and stalled construction.

The stairs will either stay or get moved, but our trade unions' dream of a vacant Goldtex Apartment Building and a bankrupt Post Brothers won't happen. The positioning of the stairs is certainly a valid concern, one which should have been addressed before construction began.

But the outcry from the trade unions and their supporters, and the media's overreaction on their behalf is only making them appear less credible and relevant to a much larger and rational public that already views these unions as petty and outdated.

It's a shame because in this particular instance the firefighter's union is actually doing what it was designed to do, but the trade unions have done such a good job at crying wolf that when any union actually does its job, only the union members and muckrakers seem to care.

Discover Downtown Philadelphia

As a transplanted Philadelphian, I have a hard time uttering "Pashyunk" or "worter ice," and I expect crab on my Crab Fries. However, I try my best to call the Loft District, "Callowhill," and am pretty sure that Center City is between Vine and South, not Spring Garden and Washington.

One particular outsider expression I have managed to break myself of, one that seems to annoy natives of any neighborhood, is referring to Center City as "Downtown Philadelphia."

But where is Philadelphia's "downtown?" Every city has one. And while Center City's compact boundaries do encompass our city's central business, residential, and retail corridors, Center City is not necessarily synonymous with "downtown."

Center City can often be as diverse as the city itself. With Chinatown, the Gayborhood, Society Hill, Market East, Rittenhouse, and Old City, Center City tends to look less like a traditional downtown like those clearly defined in New York or Los Angeles and more demographically and economically like the entirety of a city.

The truth is, there is a very real, specific "Downtown Philadelphia." When you pass by the city on 95 or 76, or view it from Camden or University City, Philadelphia's downtown neighborhood is its most visible, yet once you get to the city, it's the last place you'd visit.

West of City Hall, roughly north of Chestnut and below Logan Square's quaint Colonial relics lie our cities most towering feats of modern engineering. Downtown Philadelphia is what makes our city look like a city, yet we never really bothered to give it a name.

Some call it West Market, which is more indicative of the street itself, while others refer to JFK Boulevard as Logan Square. However JFK's towering skyscrapers and apartment blocks conjure up images of Midtown Manhattan more than Logan Square's Swan Memorial Fountain and Franklin Institute.

In fact, according to Wikipedia the area around 18th and JFK is known as Philadelphia's "French Quarter." Did you know we had a French Quarter?  

If you're like most Philadelphians, you probably don't spend much time under our city's skyscrapers. Next time you're downtown, look up. Day or night, you'll find something to do.

Chima's Brazilian Steakhouse is an exercise in gluttony that would make a Montana beef farmer blush. Bet on a horse at the Turf Club. If you have a "society" friend, check out the view from the Pyramid Club. Catch a game at Commerce Square's massive outdoor television. Check out the Art Deco interior of Suburban Station. Grab a cocktail with a view at R2L. Or simply grab your camera and spend an afternoon or evening gawking upward like a tourist in your own town. Downtown Philadelphia is a remarkable place.