Category: Life in the Big City

Good news in Philly

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

OOPS! APRIL FOOLS, I GOT PUNKED!

We had a surprise Republican win in a local win in a special election, but the Dems have recovered the ball:

Throughout the campaign, Martina White picked up dozens of important labor endorsements, and in a press release issued on April 1, she stated that she will caucus with the Democratic Party over the next two years, and will then run as a Democrat. This move will help the struggling House Democratic Campaign Committee save money that would have been needed in other key primary primaries and local elections.

Jim Kenney

~ susie ~ 3 Comments

jim-kenney-philly (1)

If you’re a Philadelphia voter, Jim Kenney is the only progressive candidate in the mix. (He’s the only guy running who opposes the charter schools, is planning to implement universal pre-K, got pot possession knocked down to a misdemeanor, worked to get same-sex partner benefits for city employees long before anyone else did.)

Now I hear rumors that Bill Green, the former head of the School Reform Commission, is thinking of running as an independent — most likely to split the white vote.

If you can donate to Kenney, please do so. It would be nice to have four progressive mayors in L.A., Chicago, New York and Philly. Why, it might even make the New York Times “trending” section!

The Hellmouth has moved south

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Bridesburg, Philadelphia - 2014

Remember when I lived in Bucks County, and referred to the town in which I lived as “the Hellmouth”? Now, along with the Arctic cold, the weirdness has moved south and my quiet little neighborhood has turned into something from Twin Peaks.

The other night, there was a violent rape at gunpoint by two teenage boys, about a quarter-mile from my house.

That same night, a young man who stabbed his mother to death in their home.

And Saturday, they found a dead body, floating in the Delaware River behind the local rec center.

Maybe it’s me?

A slice of New York history goes up in smoke

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

When an old building goes down, I feel it viscerally. I love the imagined history of every old place, and before you know it, we won’t have many left:

An explosion in Manhattan’s East Village on Thursday injured an estimated 25 people and destroyed a row of landmarked buildings that have held meaning for generations of New Yorkers. At one time the mayor’s residence was there, and another building housed an iconic vintage-clothing store made popular in the 1985 film Desperately Seeking Susan. “It’s a… Continue reading “A slice of New York history goes up in smoke” →

Massive fire in East Village after gas explosion

~ susie

We’ve had six building collapse in Philly in the past month, some with gas explosions, some without. They say it’s from the freeze-thaw-freeze cycle we have with the imaginary global warming. Why be afraid of terrorists when our failing infrastructure is a more immediate danger? Here’s hoping no one was killed:

As many as 30 people were hurt when an explosion caused a partial building collapse and ignited a massive fire in the East Village on Thursday afternoon, law-enforcement sources told The Post.

Flames were engulfing two buildings at the scene and firefighters were spraying water on the blaze, as thick smoke billowed over the neighborhood.

The destruction near the corner of Second Avenue and East Seventh Street was reported shortly before 3:30 p.m.

Cops in the Ninth Precinct stationhouse, about a quarter-mile away, heard a loud bang and raced over, sources said.

A diner who was eating at the Sushi Park restaurant at 121 Second Avenue told cops he heard an explosion inside the kitchen there, a source said.

Day laborers also told cops they had been working on a gas line inside the kitchen, and there were 911 reports of possible gas leak just before the blast, a source said.

In addition to 121 Second Ave., the building next door at 123, which houses the Pommes Frites restaurant, was also on fire.

Dean backs Rahm’s opponent

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

Howard DEAN, former US Governor and Presidential candidate

I think Garcia might be part of the DFA endorsed slate, so of course Howard Dean’s going to back him:

WASHINGTON – Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor, Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate endorsed Jesus “Chuy” Garcia over Rahm Emanuel for Chicago mayor on Thursday.

Important back story: When Emanuel was the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he stuck it to Dean in 2006 – when Dean was the DNC chair. Emanuel wanted Dean to funnel millions of dollars to help House candidates. Emanuel taunted Dean’s “50 State Strategy” and a leaked story about how little Emanuel thought of Dean found its way into print.

Now, back to the present: Enough with the payback. What could this mean?

Dean throwing himself in the mix adds a high-profile progressive voice to Garcia’s team and hits at Emanuel’s vulnerability that was so apparent in the February primary – Emanuel’s lack of a strong ground game to spur turnout in wards where he had supporters.

Customer service

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

seanthorntonspublichouse-ex

So my friend and I went to this neighborhood brunch place yesterday. One of the main attractions was that they advertised that they start serving brunch at 9 a.m. Very few places around here serve food that early, with the exception of the one remaining diner, and the food there is overpriced and meh. A profile in the local paper sounded like it would be good, so we went.

On the outside, it looked promising. It was all done up like a real Irish pub, but once we got inside, it had all the ambiance of a church basement, circa 1965. There were real tablecloths at least, but our tabletop was covered with a thin glass square that kept sliding off.

We asked for tea, and the waitress shrugged and said, “If we have it.” Even though it said it was served free with brunch, right on the menu. That took a while; it was finally delivered, with no spoons, a quart container of half and half and a bowl of sugar with a spoon sticking out.

We ordered food, which arrived 45 minutes later. (We finally saw the chef arrive, about 25 minutes after we ordered.) I have to say, though, the food was really good. My friend said, “Maybe the chef overslept with daylight savings time.”

Stop and frisk

~ susie ~ 1 Comment

I never met Questlove, but when I was a little kid, my aunt and cousins lived in Bartram Village, where we could hang out in the stairwell and listen to Lee Andrews (Questlove’s father) and the Hearts practice their harmonies. When I listened to his story about the constant indignity of “stop and frisk,” I wanted to cry — especially when a Philadelphia cop explained to him he was driving the “wrong” car.

Democracy Now:

On the heels of this week’s historic ruling declaring the “stop-and-frisk” tactics of the New York City Police Department unconstitutional, Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson of the Grammy Award-winning band The Roots joins us to talk about his own experiences being racially profiled by police. Questlove describes the first time he was harassed by police, as a young teenager in Philadelphia on his way to Bible study, to the most recent: being pulled over in his car by the NYPD two weeks ago, despite being one of the most acclaimed artists in hip-hop. He also discusses the message he took away as an African-American male from the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin: “You’re guilty no matter what, and you just now have to figure out a way to make everyone feel safe and everyone feel comfortable, even if it’s at the expense of your own soul.”

Class segregation

~ susie ~ 2 Comments

Broad Street Blast

Isn’t it ironic? If I have to move again, I will probably end up in the suburbs — because my city, which used to be one of the most affordable on the East Coast — is now too expensive for me to get an apartment:

Concentrated poverty is one of the biggest problems facing cities today, as more of the urban poor become isolated in neighborhoods where the people around them are poor, too. Growing economic segregation across cities, though, is also shaped by a parallel, even stronger force: concentrated wealth.

A new analysis from Richard Florida and Charlotta Mellander at the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute, which identifies the most and least economically segregated metropolitan areas in the United States, makes clear that economic segregation today is heavily shaped by the choices of people at the top: “It is not so much the size of the gap between the rich and poor that drives segregation,” they write, “as the ability of the super-wealthy to isolate and wall themselves off from the less well-to-do.”

Florida and Mellander created an index of economic segregation that takes into account how we’re divided across metro areas by income, but also by occupation and education, two other pillars of what we often think of as socioeconomic status. Among the largest metros in the country, Austin ranks as the place where wealthy, college-educated professionals and less-educated, blue-collar workers are least likely to share the same neighborhoods.

[…]

Before calculating their combined index, Florida and Mellander also looked at separate measures of segregation by income, education and occupation, and an interesting pattern arises across all three. Within a given region, such as Washington, we can think about income segregation, for example, in at least two ways: To what degree are the wealthy isolated from everyone else? Or to what degree are the poor concentrated in just a few parts of town? The wealthy can be highly segregated in a metro area (occupying just a few neighborhoods), even while the poor are pretty evenly dispersed (with low segregation).

The interesting pattern: By income, the wealthy (households making more than $200,000 a year) are more segregated than the poor (families living under the federal poverty line). By education, people with college degrees are more segregated than people with less than a high school diploma. By occupation, the group that Florida has coined the “creative class” is more segregated than the working class.

The problem of economic segregation, in other words, isn’t simply about poor people pushed into already-poor neighborhoods — it’s even more so about the well-off choosing to live in places where everyone else is well-off, too. In fact, of all the different forms of segregation that Mellander and Florida examined, the segregation of the wealthy was the most severe.