Philadelphia City Paper Archives

She is young, 21, smokes Parliament Lights, and inhales deep with every drag before blowing out, visibly young — her pale skin soft, real, not manipulated. Her features are unmarked. No makeup that you can identify. No tattoos. Holes from ear piercings, but they’re unfilled. She beams with energy at every exchange and inquest,...

month ago, Ben Smith, a writer for political blog and newspaper The Politico, posted a two-sentence blurb about Philly in his online column. Smith wrote: An Obama supporter, who canvassed for the candidate in the working-class, white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, sends over an account that, in various forms, I’ve heard...

The elevator doors slide open into what feels like an adult kindergarten class. Campaign staffers pinball around the room like dizzied Duck Duck Goose contestants, stopping only to answer questions or direct traffic while volunteers leap for ringing phones, pound away at laptops, and huddle around tables covered with mounds of charted...

The Viking Hall at Ritner and Swanson streets has been lots of things since becoming the New Alhambra in 1992: a bingo parlor, a Mummers practice space, a boxing palace and home to Combat Zone Wrestling (CZW) after Extreme Championship Wrestling went into bankruptcy. Within the next few weeks, New York Dolls,...

Megaloping has only three simple rules. One: All vehicles used must be operated by a public transit company. Two: Using regional or long-distance transit systems is forbidden. Three: No megaloper can walk more than two miles. Unfortunately, there’s no rule in this social/infrastructural experiment about sticking to the schedule. It’s 1:30 p.m....

Whatever else he is, Philadelphia’s next mayor is going to be a crisis mayor. In addition to the ongoing catastrophes of poverty and an unsound economy, he can expect to face a homicide crisis that is escalating as surely as summer approaches; a budget crisis that threatens to incapacitate the city government;...

The term “pojangmacha” literally means “covered wagon,” and it’s commonly used to refer to the tented restaurants on wheels in Seoul. The Korean community in Upper Darby has its own version by the train crossing on Terminal Square. With a 15-year track record and dedicated clientele, however, this particular pojangmacha has a...

This the season for holiday parties and even Philadelphia’s mafia is getting in the spirit. Next week, mafiosos and their ilk will gather at Malone’s bar at 18th and Ritner streets, the same place where more than 70 “made men” and associates toasted the health of alleged mob boss Joseph “Uncle Joe”...

say college; you say kegger. I say naked; you say co-ed. It’s no wonder university sex rags can’t get no respect. JiaJia Fei, an aspiring photographer and junior art history major at Bryn Mawr College, wants to change that. And she may have founded the perfect literary erotica magazine to do it....

Fourteen years ago, when Morjorie Newlin was 72, her neighborhood supermarket had 50-pound bags of kitty litter on sale. Without anyone to help her carry the bags back to her house, she struggled mightily under the load. Never a particularly athletic woman, but staunchly independent, she decided that she had to do...