Old City / Society Hill : In The News

AOL's travel blog Gadling makes a stop in Philly and is instantly enamored with Old City co-working space Independents Hall.

Sitting in a kitchen in a loft on Third Street in Old City, talking to one of the most enthusiastic and driven people I've met in years, I began to wonder what would happen if I quit my job, moved to Philadelphia and started my own business. Alex Hillman, wearing a t-shirt that read "I <3 my internet friends," was selling me on the cheekily named co-working space Independents Hall, of which he's a co-founder. His friend Parker Whitney was helping, telling me the story of his two years in Philadelphia.

The IndyHall guys certainly have the attention of the city, or at least some of its politicians. City councilman Bill Green is a big supporter, and government staffers are taking notice of the way things get done when fueled by passionate people-and Victory beer happy hours.

Original source: Gadling
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The Chicago Tribune marvels at Philly's outdoor art scene through a pair of tours showcasing the groundbreaking work of the Mural Arts program..

On my latest trip there, Philadelphia again stole my heart. But this time, instead of falling for Philly's red-bricked history, I fell for its outside art. Nicknamed the City of Murals, Philadelphia has more than 3,000 outdoor murals. The nonprofit City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program (MAP) collection includes 1,700 painted walls.

Although founded to help eradicate graffiti in 1984, under Executive Director Jane Golden, MAP now connects artists with communities by creating art in public spaces. When travelers pay for a guided tour from MAP, it helps support Mural Arts' education and youth development, including the Restorative Justice Program, which teaches inmates, ex-offenders and juvenile delinquents how to paint murals.

Source: The Chicago Tribune
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Chef Michael Solomonov of Zahav Restaurant in Society Hill says his grandmother's cooking inspires him, according to ABC's Nightline.

Michael Solomonov admits that as a kid he was "a terrible eater. I was like, 'I don't like tomatoes.'� I would eat � toast with sugar on it [all the time]."

The one thing he would never turn down were his grandmother's bourekas, savory puff pastries usually filled with cheese and olives. "She was Bulgarian, and they moved to Israel in '48, right after the War of Independence. She cooked these Balkan things that were foreign to everyone here in the United States, even Jews," he said.

Whenever she made a batch, Solomonov, his father and his brother "would eat bourekas and fall asleep -- kind of like face down on the plate."

Source: Nightline, ABC News

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Oliver Strand names six Philly coffee spots he loves as much as our sports, art and culture, according to the New York Times.

Philadelphia has plenty going for it: the best four-man rotation in baseball, art worth fighting over, a ruin so elegant and haunting it feels like Berlin. It also has superb coffee. Recently, I went on a coffee crawl that took me to a handful of shops where the baristas aren't just tremendously skilled, they're disarmingly sweet-natured. I found an energetic scene thriving outside the gravitational pull of the hometown giant La Colombe Torrefaction.

I was in Philadelphia to check out the local Thursday Night Throwdown --TNT to insiders -- a monthly cappuccino-off where 32 baristas compete for glory (the winner gets his or her initials embroidered on a strip of denim) and a decent-sized kitty (from the entrance fees). The evening was three hours of steaming milk in front of a crowd plied with pizza and beer. A news crew taped the throw-down, maybe because one of the judges was Winston Justice, offensive tackle for the Eagles and co-owner of Elixr Coffee, the host of the contest. Later, a good number of the competitors and spectators adjourned to a dive bar with a drag show -- the $7 cover included a can of beer and a shot of Jim Beam. Fun town.

Source: The New York Times
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The New York Times takes a tourist's road less traveled into Northwest Philly, where visitors get a heaping helping of Philly's quirks and charms in Germantown.

The No. 23 city bus running along the cobblestones is still known as the "trolley,"and you can take it to visit the house where a young Benjamin Franklin stopped for advice on books or to other homes where Revolutionary War battles left powder marks and bloodstains. George Washington slept here, a lot, and decades later so did runaway slaves at a well-preserved stop on the Underground Railroad. There's also a homey lunch spot known for its veggie burger.

Historic sites in Philadelphia (and restaurants that serve veggie burgers) may not seem so notable, but visitors don't often make it to Germantown Avenue, where the trolley runs, preferring instead to brave the crowds at Independence Hall and the National Constitution Center in Center City.

Source: The New York Times
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A new exhibit about bad guys in history at The National Constitution Center is worth flying east for, according to the Los Angeles Times.

If your knowledge of spies and terrorists is limited to the names of Benedict Arnold, Timothy McVeigh and Osama bin Laden, visit Philadelphia this spring and learn about anarchists and traitors that have haunted America since its birth.

On March 4, "Spies, Traitors & Saboteurs: Fear and Freedom in America" opens in the National Constitution Center's new exhibition space in the Center's lower level. Created by the International Spy Museum in Washington, the exhibition combines artifacts, multimedia elements and interactive exhibits to reveal tales of espionage, treason and deception in the U.S. from 1776 to today.

Source: Los Angeles Times
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The Washington Post travel section puts together a respectable Philadelphia Freedom package that gives a refined look at U.S. history and the city's ability to share it, including the newly opened National Museum of American Jewish History.

Independence Hall is where the founding fathers signed the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, and ratified the U.S. Constitution in 1787. The Liberty Bell, cracks and all, became a symbol of the abolitionist movement and of efforts to attain freedom around the globe.

In the past decade, the historical events embodied by these icons have gained new context as the Liberty Bell moved to its own interpretive center and a museum dedicated to explaining the Constitution opened at the northern end of the mall. Now several new attractions on or adjacent to the mall are adding their own chapters, some with unexpected twists, to the traditional understanding of American freedoms and how they came to be.

The National Museum of American Jewish History, affiliated with the Smithsonian, opens its dazzling new home on the mall to the public today. The President's House commemorative site, on the spot where presidents George Washington and John Adams, as well as nine enslaved African Americans, lived before the nation's capital was moved to Washington, is set to open Dec. 15. A 15-minute 3-D film, "Liberty 360," premiered this fall in a theater across from Independence Hall and offers yet another perspective on the goings-on that led to the nation's founding.

Original source: Washington Post
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The month-old Museum Without Walls audio program uses technology to give many of Philadelphia's outdoor sculptures museum-quality perspective, reports the Associated Press.

Its self-guided audio tours are available 24-7 in several different formats: You can call phone numbers listed with each sculpture, use a free smart phone app, download the audio at http://museumwithoutwallsaudio.org to an MP3 player, or scan a special bar code (known as a QR or quick response code) on the free "Museum Without Walls" map at locations around the city.

The project's first phase includes 51 outdoor sculptures at 35 stops along a three-mile stretch of the bustling Benjamin Franklin Parkway from downtown to leafy Fairmount Park, a route popular with bicyclists, runners and walkers.

Original source: Associated Press
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Beauty and style editor Ysolt Usigan goes on a whirlwind tour of our city, dispelling the New York elitist notion that we're its "sixth borough," reports The Huffington Post.

When it came to partying, two speakeasies, and I was had! Once defined as "an establishment that illegally sells alcoholic beverages" in the '20s and '30s, I discovered two venues with that feel nestled in Philadelphia's Penn Center neighborhood. First stop: the sexy Ranstead Room. With entrances through El Rey's kitchen and outside on the street (just look for the door marked with double Rs), I had cocktails with names so complicated I can't even remember them. Even though it was quite dim inside, the naked ladies gracing the walls were hard to miss. The venue is hot, to say the least.

From vintage shops to lux salons, even vast department stores with plenty of preppy and chic options to boot, there's no question--Philly knows style. I picked the best time to visit the city, too, with the Philadelphia Collection 2010 series underway. From September 23 to October 2, the city's many boutiques, stylists, designers and modeling agencies were hosting various independently produced events.

Original source: The Huffington Post
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Leadership of the National Museum of American Jewish History earned CNN's attention with its decision to remain open on Saturdays, the Jewish Sabbath, but do its best to avoid financial transactions, which are among those things the religion forbids on that day.

"We chose to embrace this as a teachable moment that reflects not only the tradition itself but also the tensions that are at the core of the American Jewish experience," Rosenzweig told CNN Sunday night.

"We're a Jewish institution, but we're not a religious institution," (Museum president Michael) Rosenzweig said. "We want to be sensitive to Jewish tradition but we also recognized that a significant number of visitors will be non-Jewish."

Though the museum will open on Saturdays, tickets will be available only online and at sites outside the museum, which are yet to be determined, Rosenzweig said.

Original source: CNN
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The Wall Street Journal breaks down the movie madness in Philadelphia, where the 19th annual Philadelphia Film Festival kicked off last week with a visit from Black Swan director Darren Aronofsky.

Festival organizers were clearly hoping to open the festival with a bang and overshadow the confusion over Philly's cinematic scene that sprouted two years ago. Originally, TLA Entertainment and the Philadelphia Film Society (PFS) sponsored the Festival. In late 2008, creative differences arose between PFS founder Ray Murray and PFS members. There were also arguments over how to approach fundraising.

According to Claire Kohler, the director of production of Philadelphia Cinema Alliance, when the "personality clashes" and differences became "pronounced," Murray and TLA formed the Philadelphia Cinema Alliance (PCA), a competing organization that would also produce its own film festival called CineFest. In short, PFS puts on the Philadelphia Film Festival, which runs in the fall, and PCA puts on CineFest, which took a break in 2010 but which will run in spring 2011.

Original source: Wall Street Journal
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The Associated Press profiles David Borgenicht and the indie publishing outfit he founded, Quirk Books, which is expanding its niche with a hybrid mashup genre combining classics with horror and kitsch.

Quirk, an independent publisher that started with a series of tongue-in-cheek guides for surviving highly unlikely misfortunes, has established the hybrid "mashup" genre bending of out-of-copyright classics and horror-fied kitsch.

"It has in a way become kind of a modern, or a postmodern, classic," said Quirk president and founder David Borgenicht, whose 15-person staff works in an inconspicuous building on a cobblestone-paved side street in Philadelphia's Old City neighborhood. "That wasn't at all our intent. It was simply too crazy not to publish."
 
Original source: Associated Press
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The travel section at Ireland's Herald.ie is high on Philadelphia for a variety of reasons, imploring the Irish to visit for our safe downtown, good eats and arts and culture.

It's puzzling why Philly isn't on most Irish people's radar. It's more historic than Boston, as Irish as Chicago, 30pc cheaper to live in than New York and has a food culture to match San Francisco.

The city centre proper, (known as Center City) is thriving, unlike many US urban areas. Sections of 15th Street are hubs of restaurants and nightlife, while the area's aptly titled Avenue of the Arts is the local equivalent of London's West End or New York's Broadway theatre districts. The best bit? It feels perfectly safe to walk around, by day or night (don't try this at home, kids).

Original source: Herald.ie
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A new report by the Pew Charitable Trusts indicates an encouraging trend of more people moving into Philadelphia since 1993, reports The Philadelphia Inquirer.

According to the Pew report, the number of people moving into the city has increased steadily, up from 31,837 in 1993 to 42,250 in 2008.

Overall, the number of people moving out of the city is growing less rapidly, increasing slightly from 47,291 in 1993 to 52,096 in 2008.

"I would say the trend is looking as if we may be seeing a reversal of long-term decline in city population," said David Elesh, sociologist and demography expert with the Metropolitan Philadelphia Indicators Project at Temple University.

Original source: The Philadelphia Inquirer
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The St. Louis Post-Dispatch travel section mentions booing Santa Claus but quickly moves on, digging deeper than most national media last week to reveal the insider's view of Philadelphia.

Once you get beyond the fighting fa�ade, Philadelphia is a city of tiny secret gardens, a diverse art and theater scene, a crazy diverse food/pub scene and a thousand walkable historical monuments and museums. Also, it's cheap as can be. You've got to work to spend $15 on a martini.

I moved here six years ago from St. Louis. The things I loved about St. Louis are the same things I love about Philadelphia--people are friendly, the streets have the same names (you copycats!) and there's no need to go to any chain restaurant ever.

Original source: St. Louis Post-Dispatch
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