Nightlife : In The News

As construction on the Parkway wraps up, The Barnes Foundation has been given the judiciary green light to leave Lower Merion, according to the Associated Press.

Montgomery County Orphans Court Judge Stanley Ott ruled Thursday that there is no new evidence to consider.
Petitioners had asked Ott to re-examine his 2004 decision allowing the Barnes to leave its suburban home.

They contend the 2009 documentary "The Art of the Steal" includes new evidence that he didn't have when he originally ruled. But Ott disagrees.

Source: The Associated Press
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October is Mural Arts Month, with 31 days of art activities and celebrations, as told by the Los Angeles Times.

Art is in the air in October as Philadelphia celebrates many of its more than 3,500 murals during Mural Arts Month.

What began in 1984 as part of the Philadelphia Anti-Graffiti Network has blossomed into the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program.  Muralist and founder Jane Golden redirected the energy and creativity of graffiti artists from marring neighborhood walls into murals, and the program now gives birth to about 150 murals a year. 

Highlights of "31 Days, 31 Ways: Art Ignites Change" include mural dedications, outdoor celebrations and free tours.

Source: Los Angeles Times
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Local restaurants are getting a reputation for farm fresh ingredients, according to OffManhattan.

To taste the freshest produce in the region, you can shop one of the city’s many farmers market, haul your selections back home, and crack open a cookbook. Or you can take the effortless route, and settle into one of the top farm-to-table restaurants in Philadelphia.

Uniquely positioned between ‘Jersey Fresh’ territory and Amish Country, Philly offers its chefs an impressive variety of local, seasonal ingredients from which to craft their award-winning menus. And diners will be excited to know that much of this produce makes its way from farm to plate just one day after harvesting. Yes, the peppery radishes and buttery greens in your appetizer salad may have been plucked from the dirt just hours ago.

Source: OffManhattan
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The increasingly famous punk rockers from Lansdale, The Wonder Years, filmed their new music video in Philadelphia, which provided much inspiration for their newest full-length release Suburbia, according to Glasswerk National.

The Wonder Years have unveiled their new video for track "Local Man Ruins Everything". Filmed in the band's hometown of Philadelphia, PA, it includes locations that were inspired by and mentioned in their newest full-length Suburbia, I've Given You All And Now I'm Nothing. The band are heading to the UK this September for a headline tour, following their stint earlier this year on the Kerrang! Tour. Dan "Soupy" Campbell of the band comments: "We're stoked to announce that, in support of our new record Suburbia I've Given You All and Now I'm Nothing, we'll be coming back to the UK! Even more exciting than that, we'll be bringing Such Gold and Valencia with us! It's going to be awesome and we hope to see you all there!"

Source: Glasswerk National (UK)
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Expanding south, the Brooklyn-born Barcade concept comes to Philadelphia next month, according to Inc. Magazine in this profile of its founders

As a kid, Paul Kermizian was younger than most everyone else at the local arcade. He got pushed aside. He had to wait in line.

Not anymore. Today he can play whenever he wants�and he doesn't even have to keep a pocketful of quarters. Kermizian, now 36, is the owner of Barcade, a hybrid craft beer bar and�yep, you called it�video arcade. With four partners, his longtime friends Jon Miller, Scott Beard, Kevin Beard, and Pete Langway, he launched the bar in two locations: Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and Jersey City. And their retro empire is growing: a third Barcade is scheduled to open next month in Philadelphia.

Source: Inc. Magazine
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This month, Philadelphia GayFest! presents four GLBT-themed plays and a reading at the Shubin Theater, according to Passport Magazine.

August gets very gay in Philadelphia with the debut of GayFest!, a new GLBT theater festival presented by Quince Productions. With four plays running in repertory and a staged reading of a new gay play, the event promises to make the tiny Shubin Theatre a hotbed of gayness.

Source: Passport Magazine
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The New York Times taps into Fishtown's rapidly expanding beer scene.

Here is the second installment of our bar-hopping guide. When it comes to beer in Philadelphia, Anders Larson, a bartender at the groundbreaking Northern Liberties pub 700 Club, puts it best: "It's a happy time to be a Philadelphian. You can rarely say that!" This installment takes a look at the Fishtown neighborhood.

Original source: New York Times
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The Bowery Presents rock club group will open Union Transfer in Philadelphia in the former Spaghetti Warehouse building on Spring Garden Street, with help from local impresarios Sean Agnew and Avram Hornik, according to The New York Times.

The Bowery Presents empire of rock clubs and theaters has already expanded from the Lower East Side to New Jersey, Massachusetts and Maine, and now it is spreading to Pennsylvania.

Working with two local partners, the company is opening Union Transfer, a new performance space near Center City in Philadelphia with room for 600 people. The first show will be Clap Your Hands Say Yeah on Sept. 21, and other coming shows include Shellac on Sept. 29, Wild Flag on Oct. 19 and Boris on Oct. 28, according to an announcement on Tuesday by Bowery Presents. About 200 shows a year are planned for the space, which was once a train depot and more recently a Spaghetti Warehouse restaurant.

Source: The New York Times

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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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Philly Beer Week is viewed through the lens of Philadelphia's long, rich and tasty brewing history in this Washington Times report.

Philadelphia's role in worldly beer, though, is not limited to just German-style beer. Local publican Tom Peters, of the famed Monk's Cafe, is credited with bringing the first kegged Belgian beer to the States to be served on draft. With Philadelphia's well-known affinity for great beer, many of this country's and Belgium's beers make their way in to the Philadelphia beer market.

Therefore, local brewers, importers, and distributors have created more educated consumers who have demanded more experimentation and innovation. The circle of supply and demand remains unbroken in Philadelphia.

Original source: Washington Times
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The New York Times realizes a rich artistic landscape in Philadelphia that came alive at the Friday opening of the Opera Company of Philadelphia's "Phaedra" American premiere.

And in the Perelman Theater, an intimate space at the Kimmel Center, just steps away from the Philadelphia Orchestra's dimly regarded home at Verizon Hall, the Opera Company of Philadelphia has scored a substantial artistic coup with the American premiere of "Phaedra," a compelling 2007 opera by Hans Werner Henze. Part of the company's growing contemporary chamber-opera initiative, a new production directed by Robert B. Driver, opened on Friday night.

That this opera, an 80-minute setting of a German libretto by Christian Lehnert, exists at all is something of a miracle. Mr. Henze had announced that his previous opera, "L'Upupa," or "The Hoopoe, and the Triumph of Filial Love" (2003), would be his last. Then, having completed most of the first act of "Phaedra" in 2005, Mr. Henze, already ailing, fell into a two-month coma, from which his recovery was uncertain.

Original source: The New York Times
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Philly native Sean Kirkpatrick wins a movie contest for his low budget debut Cost of a Soul and gets a 50-theater distribution deal, according to the Huffington Post.

Sean Kirkpatrick's debut film Cost of a Soul is a heavy, dark drama about how crime and drugs make life difficult for two veterans (Chris Kerson, Will Blagrove) returning to north Philadelphia from Iraq. For the 28-year-old rookie director, however, fortune appears to smiling.

The micro-budgeted film opens May 20 on 50 AMC Theatre screens around the United States because Cost of a Soul won Rogue/Relativity Media's Big Break Movie Contest.

Source: The Huffington Post
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The Washington Post trumpets the Philadelphia Orchestra's proving its worth during a Kennedy Center performance on Friday.

Obviously no one expected the orchestra, which filed for bankruptcy protection in April, to take the stage in patched evening wear, with broken bows and dented brass, or to pass the hat at intermission. Members of the staff were, though, wearing buttons saying "Listen with your heart," the slogan of the ongoing fundraising campaign hoping to mitigate a structural deficit of $14.5 million.

Expectations went, if anything, the other way -- on the high side. The Philadelphia Orchestra is a regular guest in Washington, thanks to the Washington Performing Arts Society, whose president, Neale Perl, mentioned in his standard pre-concert remarks that this was the orchestra's 40th WPAS appearance. Those appearances are usually among the season's best orchestra concerts that the Washington audience gets to hear on its home turf.

No fear. Friday's concert was one of the best I've heard from the orchestra in years.

Source: The Washington Post
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A pair of rare baseball tickets from The Athletic Base Ball Club of Philadelphia turn up at a Massachusetts auction, according to Boston.com.

At a local auction, Colin Twing bid $60 on what he thought were two 19th century railroad tickets, figuring each might be worth that much apiece.

As it turns out, the Pittsfield man acquired a pair of baseball tickets that two researchers are calling rare finds for the national pastime.

Source: Boston.com
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