I’ve been wondering when this obvious thing would happen:
The most exciting news about the papal visit thus far. Update to the Dirty Franks Mural! #PopeinPhilly pic.twitter.com/5PGavJVdEb
— Lauren Vidas (@BroadAndMarket) August 10, 2015
I started going to the iconic Dirty Frank’s dive bar when I was 15. I haven’t been in years but I did look forward to the day they added Pope Frank to the mural of famous Franks on the building.
I turned the A/C on at 8:30. I had a hardboiled egg and iced tea for breakfast. It is pretty damned hot.
My, I can hardly keep track these days:
A man armed with an assault rifle opened fire at a crowded park in Desire Sunday (July 26), shooting at least four people, including a man left critically wounded, New Orleans police said.
The attack came around 6:20 p.m., when Edith Sampson Playground Park at the corner of Piety and Treasure streets was crowded with family gatherings and several children were playing inside two inflatable “space walkers,” witnesses said.
“I was scared for my life,” said one woman, who asked that her name be withheld for fear of retaliation. “All those children was out there. I just got down and was saying, ‘Everybody lay on the ground!’ It was sad.”
One man, described as about 28 to 30 years old, was gravely wounded in the attack, suffering multiple gunshot wounds to his chest and side, police said. He was transported by New Orleans EMS ambulance to Interim LSU Hospital in critical condition, NOPD spokesman Officer Frank Robertson said.
Continue reading “Did you know there was another mass shooting in Louisiana this week?”
Do you think maybe you could skip Philly this time? It’s gonna be a friggin’ nightmare here. People aren’t going to be able to get to work, the entire downtown is going to be shut down.
This is funny, because apparently I talk like an old Italian. This is how I pronounce most of these foods! But then, I went to high school with a lot of Italian girls, and I guess it rubbed off on me. I did always wonder why the words so often didn’t sound anything like their spelling.
https://youtu.be/G9oIG-n6Eok
Not even 9 a.m., and I had to turn the AC on.
An EXCESSIVE HEAT WARNING is in effect for the I-95 corridor and the metro areas until 8:00 p.m. with heat indices ranging from 100-107.
Someone here in Philly took this with his cell phone. That is some weird-looking thing, isn’t it? What do you think it is?
The video, which has more than 1.2 million views, was shot by Philadelphia resident Hector Garcia, who describes a “cloud with sparkling lights in it” behaving like something he’s never seen before. If you don’t have great eyes, be sure to zoom in on the video to see the cloud shimmer. That’s what’s really strange about it. Did a chunk of cloud with a volatile electric field break off and have its own little storm of the century?
It could easily be CGI, but Garcia speaks so disinterestedly in the video that it’s hard to imagine him going to the trouble. Some have suggested it’s a large plastic bag or some kind of foam.
Nobody seems to know, but if nobody cares either, don’t say you weren’t warned. Whatever it was, look out for extraterrestrials and have your phones ready.
It’s really turning into a giant clusterfuck. They seem convinced his visit is a major terrorism magnet:
Aggravating the problem is SEPTA, whose convoluted plans to try to accommodate the masses are beyond human comprehension. I need a special rail pass? Only a limited number of them will be sold? Only a few stations will be open? I have to buy my pass online? “It will be valid only for travel from the specified outlying station during the selected time slot, and for travel from Center City back to that station after the Papal Visit events”? I need a whole other papal pass to ride the buses or subway? WTF, SEPTA — are you trying to drive people away?
Listen, I know it’s fun to get all worked up and be alarmist. I also know what it can cost the city — in terms of money that doesn’t come in, goodwill that gets squandered, prestige that’s lost — when the alarmists win. Rizzo showed us that back in ’76. I read the New York Times every day, and I’ll be damned if I see a flood of articles bemoaning the trials that city will face when the Pope visits there. In fact, I don’t see any such articles at all. New York knows: Cities get through these things. You plan, you make contingencies — but you don’t stand on street corners and wail and gnash your teeth and wring your hands.
We’re a big city, Philadelphia. We can handle this. We don’t have to blow it again. So everybody, please, take a deep breath and move back from the ledge. He’s one guy — one gentle, humble guy — who’s coming to visit. You think Francis wants us getting all worked up like this?
Seems to make a lot more sense than the “broken windows” policing philosophy, where cops hassle the crap out of everyone for minor violations:
Low-cost fixes to abandoned properties, such as a fresh coat of paint and replacing boarded entryways with doors and windows, can do more than eliminate eyesores.
They can also significantly reduce crime in the area, according to a new study conducted by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania and Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine.
The study, published this week, looked at crime percentages in sections of Philadelphia where abandoned properties were rehabbed between January 2011 and April 2013, in comparison to areas where boarded-upproperties remained.
It found the simple fixes significantly decreased the amount of serious and nuisance crimes surrounding remediated buildings, including the number of gun assaults, robberies and nuisance crimes like vandalism and illegal dumping.
According to lead author Michelle Kondo, Ph.D., a former research fellow at the Perelman School of Medicine, the most significant reduction – down by 39 percent – was found for gun assaults around remediated buildings within the year following improvements.
Abandoned properties “send a signal to would-be offenders that committing crimes is acceptable and will likely go unchallenged or unseen,” the report states.
This is the first study to demonstrate the direct impact of building remediation efforts on crime, the authors said.
I was standing in line, waiting to use a cash machine. (I was already a few minutes late for a doctor’s appointment.) The woman at one of them started cursing loudly at the screen: “What the hell is this, they want to know if I want Spanish, German… This is what’s wrong with this country, everything’s PC. All these damn Spanish people!”
The lady at the other cash machine looked over at me, alarmed. “Immigrants make this country stronger,” she said in a soothing voice.
“It’s for the tourists,” I said. “They come from all over the world.” (We were in the historic area.)
“The fuck they do,” the woman said. “They ruin it for everybody. That’s what these goddamned liberals do, they make them take down the flag, it’s just not right…” She seemed to sob, then went on for a few minutes, muttering. She might have been a bag lady; she seemed mentally ill. Either that, or a very disgruntled conservative.