14 November 08: Foliage blitz . . . end?



Philly Skyline Fall Foliage Week is coming to an abrupt end with this double shot of enlargeables, one for the faith that gets us through the realistically cold and damp fall days (the likes of which can postpone decisive World Series games for two days), and one for the psychedelic sunny dreams late Octobers and early Novembers often bring us 'round these parts. The Philly Skyline Philly Skylines of this week have been only a sampling, though; next week, as I can get to them, a series of new photo essays will sample the scenes of the season -- in the park, in the air, and in a neighborhood that this web site's neighborhoods section has been calling for for years.

Also next week, Philly Skyline's latest collaboration with Johnny Brenda's in our For The Curious series takes the stage Tuesday evening for a conversation with Mayor Nutter's senior adviser and the city's first ever Director of Sustainability, Mark Alan Hughes. We'll hear a little about his day to day, what sustainability means to those of us charged with making it happen, and especially how the city's green movement is dealing with the budget crunch. For The Curious is Tuesday evening, upstairs at JB's -- doors at 6, discussion at 7, and it is FREE.

Till then, my friends, enjoy the weekend, have some Chile, and by god the Eagles had better beat the Bengals.



–B Love


14 November 08: Chile Skyline

(Not to be confused with the Great Chili Skyline Cookoff, obviously.)

DID YOU KNOW: that we are in the midst of the 20th anniversary of the Chilean and American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia?

DID YOU KNOW: that there is even a Chilean and American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia (CACC)?

There is, largely because of the importing and exporting between Philadelphia's port and Chile's ports -- upwards of 65% of Chile's exports come through the Port of Philadelphia. In 2006, over 55 million cases of Chilean fruit was unloaded at the Port. (Greater Phila Chamber of Commerce.)

Among those fruits, which also include avocados, kiwis and apples, are grapes -- enough grapes to, perhaps surprisingly, make Chile the world's leading exporter of grapes. Chilean wine has become vogue in the past few years, and as noted here a few weeks ago, a merlot from Chile's Maule Valley (my favorite valley in South America) is served at Table 31.

Mayor Nutter yesterday helped kick off what is being dubbed Chile in Philly, a weeklong celebration of CACC's 20th anniversary, by presenting Chilean ambassador Mariano Fernandez with one of the little Liberty Bells given to dignitaries. The ambassador also honored Mayor Nutter with the Orden de Bernardo O'Higgins, Grado Comendador, the highest honor bestowed upon non-Chilean citizens and approved by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet.

Chile in Philly features a full slate of events, including films at the International House, Chilean food tastings all week at the Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College, a wine tasting at the Barnes Foundation, a literary event at the Athenaeum, and an exhibition of art created in Chile's volatile 1960s at the Center for Architecture.

For more on the festival, visit its official web site HERE. For more on the Chilean and American Chamber of Commerce of Greater Philadelphia, visit their web site HERE.

–B Love





14 November 08: Foliage blitz . . .
The Italian Market is dying; long live the Italian Market!



I recognize the paradox, by the way, of a title inferring South Philly tree cover. But there it is -- a sampling of the lower end of the Market from the Lovecopter earlier this week. (The full set of those photos will be live some time next week.)

The Italian Market and its South Philly neighborhood was this week the subject of two completely different analyses: Rick Nichols' sad serenade to the disinvestment bringing down but big dreams propping up the Market's "droopy awnings" for The Inquirer, and Elizabeth Flynn's peeling back of the cover of the underground Nichols didn't explore -- a healthy art market in the Market for Phawker.

Nichols' survey, which includes profiles of a number of the Italian names operating stores there but none of the Mexicans or Asians or blacks doing the same, indicates that the Italian Market is in need of a cleanup, that it's too dirty. When has it ever been clean? (See frame of iconic, self-identifying movie at right. Click it for YouTubin' goodness of the city as it looked in 1976.)

The suggestions for improvements to the Market -- a Foodery style beer emporium, a Lancaster farmer's market, more parking -- are perfectly fine. There's room for everyone. Well, everyone except maybe those wishing to park their cars. Who drives to the Italian Market, anyway?

While it's true that the Market is a tourist draw -- how many visitors have done the walk from South Street to Pat's & Geno's, sampling the goods and storefronts along the way? -- what makes it tick is local consumption. And though there may only be a fraction of the butchers that there used to be, people have stepped in over the years to pick up the slack, be it new immigrants opening stores where sons of immigrants have closed them, or young artists like the ones Flynn profiles (including our friend El Toro).

The philly.com poll accompanying Nichols' article, asking "Is the Italian Market worth saving?", is hilariously preposterous. How can you save what's not in danger? The flavor may have shifted a little -- "the green-white-red Mexican flag [has been] woven into the long-standing green-white-red Italian heritage" as Popkin put it -- but the Market isn't going anywhere. It'll have its butchers and its cafés and its produce and its burning barrels and its heritage and its future. It'll be on 9th Street. It may change; someone may actually come in and develop the block below Washington begging for something other than a plywood wall that's good for posting bills and stickers and graffiti. But weak economy or strong economy, the Italian Market will be fine.



–B Love


12 November 08: Foliage interlude . . .
what's up with American Commerce Center



Garrett Miller is undeterred by the staggering economy. The new president of Hill International Real Estate Partners, who is now overseeing the development of his brainchild American Commerce Center, has a background in finance and says, matter-of-factly, "the development cycle is long for a building of this size -- 6 to 8 years, sometimes."

Knowing what we know in Philadelphia, it's true that from concept to ribbon-cutting, Comcast Center took nearly eight years.

If history is any indicator, an economic downturn -- even the worst one since the Great Depression -- should be no reason to stop building for the future. While home construction has bottomed out and the supply is over-saturated (take a look at the vacancy of exurban developments in places like Chester County and Saratoga Springs, NY), large scale office construction often spurs development in slower times.

The Great Depression itself spurred some of the most famous development in American history: the Empire State Building, Chrysler Building, PSFS Building, Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam, and perhaps most famously documented in the photo at right by Charles Ebbets (now owned by Corbis), Rockefeller Center.

Since its announcement in March, ACC has already evolved to include more public space, a LEED gold certification (having already been registered with the US Green Building Council), a connection to the Suburban Station concourse which currently terminates at Comcast Center, and a much-hoped-for observation deck.

Where Miller and his Hill partners are counting on an eventual economic rebound, they're counting more on landing a lead tenant. They won't mention any names, but Natalie Kostelni suggested last month in the PBJ that GlaxoSmithKline is a consideration. Then again, a month after her story, the PBJ also reported that Glaxo will be dropping Philadelphia as its US headquarters, instead focusing its efforts in the Research Triangle in North Carolina. Another rumor floating on the business market has Comcast wanting to expand beyond what Liberty Property's phase two at 18th & JFK would afford.

Of course this is only the office tower part of the project. Miller says that the shorter portion (which is in no way short) has a number of prospective tenants lined up, too, again without naming names. Rumored retail brands have included the likes of Crate & Barrel, Equinox and -- new to us -- Bloomingdale's, in a Center City whose only notable department store these days is a Macy's occupying the Wanamaker Building. The hotel brand rumors find a Fairmont more likely within ACC's caliber than, say, another Starwood hotel.

"We have time to work out these deals," Miller says confidently. "Right now, we're more concerned with moving forward in the zoning process and working to obtain the support from the community."

That process will at long last take another giant step next Tuesday the 18th as the key item on the Philadelphia City Planning Commission's November agenda. As usual, the meeting is scheduled for 1pm at the 18th floor conference room of 1515 Arch Street, but as attendance could be very high, location is subject to change. Philly Skyline will note any changes in the plan.

This will be a benchmark day in the progress of American Commerce Center, a building that will not only change the skyline, but which stands the chance of further shifting Philadelphia's civic outlook toward the positive. It's green, it's tall, it ushers in new business and new clients, and above all else, it indicates jobs -- temporary ones for a couple years' worth of construction and permanent ones filling its well lit floors. On top of all of that (literally, on top of all of that), a new observation deck might finally grace Philadelphia with a new view.

The opponents of ACC, largely from the Kennedy House, will be in attendance in en masse. They'll say that ACC is "out of scale" for its "urban village", despite the fact that Kennedy House is also a highrise, and despite the fact that their very own building addresses their "urban village" with a six story parking podium and a steakhouse whose front door is at the JFK Speedway that leads to the Schuylkill Expressway. ACC, on the other hand, in spite of the height reserved for highrise districts -- in the very middle of which it sits -- addresses the "urban village" with multiple pedestrian entrances to the building, a bicycle parking garage, and a plaza café along 18th Street.

Oh -- and it's worth pointing out that ACC's opposition is largely funded by the state senator federally indicted on 139 counts, whose trial is ongoing as we speak, and whose opposing testimony has come from a confidant who made illegal money from him, a private investigator who snooped on his exes and then-gubernatorial-candidate Ed Rendell, and even his own son-in-law. Yes, Vince Fumo -- the Democratic state senator who called Republican state senator Bob Jubelirer a "faggot" on the Senate floor in Harrisburg -- opposes the construction of a newer, taller skyscraper in the skyscraper district of Philadelphia.

But enough about Senator Fumo and the opposition he's funding, probably with your money and mine. He's going to be occupied come the Planning Commission meeting on Tuesday anyway.

Support for American Commerce Center is centered even closer to the would-be skyscraper than the embittered elderlies at the Kennedy House. Mark Flood and Chris Paliani live directly across the street at 19th & Arch and started Logan Square Neighbors for American Commerce Center -- LSN4ACC -- and as their web site states, they're more interested in supporting a significant project for the entire region than in preserving a surface parking lot.

If you agree with them and you support American Commerce Center and the statement it makes -- to growth, to sustainability, to Philadelphian pride -- come to 1515 Arch, 18th floor, on Tuesday. The meeting's at 1, so show up early.



–B Love

American Commerce Center images used with permission from Hill International Real Estate Partners and Kohn Pederson Fox. 'Lunchtime atop a skyscraper' image by Charles Ebbets, copyright owned by Corbis.


12 November 08: Foliage blitz . . .
Philly Skyline time warp: Plateau '02



After a couple years of deliberation and simply not letting go of a film photography purist's point of view, I finally bought a digital camera in fall of 2002. It was a 4 megapixel Sony CDMavica 400, which I'd decided on because of its built-in mini-CD drive (easy storage!) and its Carl Zeiss lens (big name for a 3x zoom!). Of course the full-frame, 12.8 megapixel Canon EOS 5D I use now is a step up from that, but then no sooner did I start using it than did Canon release its spawn, the 21.1 megapixel 5D Mark II, correcting a vignetting issue on the one I have, while adding a built-in 1,920 x 1,080 HD video drive. That's nice.

At any rate, I'm happy I got over my luddite views, as my photography has grown by leaps and bounds from the simple move to digital. (This is to say nothing of the time and money and frustration and waiting avoided by upgrading.) Six years seems like a long time ago, and in terms of Philly Skyline, it is. This web site was an infant, less than six months old with a "coming soon" sign that would change colors and stay there for at least another year and a half.

The Philly Skyline has also grown in leaps and bounds in those six years, at least by Philadelphian standards. Then, as now, Fairmount Park's Belmont Plateau was one of my favorite spots to enjoy the view, enjoy the scenery, and soak up fall's finest colors.

The tree above is king of the Plateau. The centuries old Norway maple stands on its own, free to grow as it likes, unimpeded by progress or sidewalks or concert festivals that make no sense. That photo, of its lush orange fall display, was taken on October 28, 2002. Spinning around from under its branches, this was the view then.



Six years ago, there was no St James, no Cira Centre, no Murano, and definitely no Comcast Center to reflect the mid-fall sunset like a 975' sun stick. It was from under that maple tree that last Veterans Day I took the photo that's on the cover of this year's calendar (and is the subject of the current month). Steve Weinik and I stopped back at the Plateau on Tuesday, 366 days (2008 is a leap year) after that photo to take another photo from the same spot. And whattaya know, here it is!



–B Love


12 November 08: Foliage blitz . . . Ripple in still water



When there is no pebble tossed, nor wind to blow.

More fall foliage scenes from Devil's Pool in the Wissahickon.



If I knew the way, I would take you home.



–B Love


12 November 08: Foliage blitz . . . Popkin's Possible!



A big thanks goes out to everyone who braved the elements on Saturday to come out for Philly Skyline vice president of content Nathaniel Popkin for his reading/signing of The Possible City at the Central Library's Skyline Room.

The Possible City book tour continues tomorrow evening at 6:30 with What's Your Possible City?, a discussion on the future of Philadelphia loosely based in the dreams and ideals found in the book. A book which begins, by the way, exploring the Wissahickon to, in turn, explore the (con)founding ideals of William Penn, who may or may not be the man depicted in the Toleration statue atop a rocky bluff. Popkin takes the view of Thomas Augustine Daly, author of the 1922 book The Wissahickon, and agrees that the granite statue donated by circa-1883 Fairmount Park Commissioner John Welsh is, in fact, William Penn.

From Chapter 1:
ON A WARM DAY IN EARLY JULY, I TAKE MY YOUNG SON Isaak to the woods along the Wissahickon Creek. The creek, which cuts a gorge through the northwest part of the city, near Germantown, eventually flows to the Schuylkill River. It is Philadelphia's most wild and sacred territory, made famous in 1843 by Edgar Allan Poe:
Its banks are generally, indeed almost universally, precipitous, and consist of high hills, clothed with noble shrubbery near the water, and crowned at a greater elevation, with some of the most magnificent forest trees of America . . . The immediate shores, however, are of granite, sharply defined or moss-covered, against which the pellucid water lolls in its gentle flow, as the blue waves of the Mediterranean upon the steps of her palaces of marble. Occasionally in front of the cliffs, extends a small definite plateau of richly herbaged land, affording the most picturesque position for a cottage and garden which the richest imagination could conceive.
Poe's travelogue, Morning on the Wissahiccon, ends with him spotting an animal he thinks is an elk posing on a rock. It may have been the rock we now call Mom Rinker's Rock. Isaak and I are headed there. We are on a quest.

It is a sultry day not unlike the one Poe describes. The air is fragrant, moist, metallic. We enter the woods from Park Drive and work our way slowly into the woods. Following the well-marked trail, we shimmy and climb through small rock formations and cross a short concrete culvert, then come upon the famous rock. Isaak takes quickly to pretending he is in a scene in Peter Pan. I wind around the famous rock.

"Can I go up?" eventually he wonders.

I guide him up the narrow trail and shortly we arrive at the founder's feet. There it is, carved in the plinth of Herman Kirn's 1883 sculpture of William Penn: TOLERATION. The only offering is a worn, wooden, heart-shaped flag circa 1976. I can't take my eyes off the word. Isaak, now bored, starts down, and left alone, I do something almost impossibly uncharacteristic: I put my fingers to my lips, stare across the gorge into the trees opposite, and then place them on the letters of the word. How odd and wonderful is the placement of this sculpture, hidden in the copse and weeds, invisible to most. This is what it must feel like to stumble upon a Buddha, or a Hindu god, in some lost Asian forest. And yet, like the Alexander Stirling Calder statue of Penn that towers above the city atop City Hall, Penn -- and his ideas -- takes prominence. If this sounds messianic, then it makes sense why standing atop the gorge, in one of the few places in Philadelphia where it is possible to gain elevation, I was so moved.

It was a prayer, I suppose, that Penn's vision would endure; that our grappling with the singular cause of plurality would make us a better people.
* * *

Nathaniel Popkin discusses The Possible City at Bridgette Mayer Gallery, 709 Walnut Street, Thursday, November 13 at 6:30pm. He will also be reading from and signing The Possible City, next Wednesday, November 19, at 6pm, at the Penn Bookstore, 3601 Walnut Street.



–B Love


12 November 08: Foliage blitz . . . City Hall!



This one's a simple quickie City Hall double shot, one from a sunny fall day, one from an overcast fall day.

Nothing new to say about Philadelphia's most in/famous building at the moment, but for maybe the awesome duo-graphic of Neil Stein and Milton Street accompanying Heard in the Hall's story on the city's top business tax delinquents that came out of that building today. Well played, Shields-Gelbart-Kerkstra-Gorenstein.



–B Love


12 November 08: Foliage blitz . . . Sugar House!



Big news at the site of what may or may not eventually be Sugar House this week: the foundations of Bachelor's Hall were probably discovered this week. This makes three items of historical significance most of us have never heard of (the others being a British fort and a wealth of Lenape artifacts) before a casino license was awarded to a casino corporation most of us have never heard of, with two more items of historical significance most of us have never heard of (a tide mill and another shipyard) remaining to be discovered.

Kellie Gates has a thorough back story on Bachelor's Hall and its alleged discovery right now at Plan Philly, HERE. She does a good job of presenting the sides of historian Torben Jenk, Sugar House's own archaeological hired hands, and the Army Corps of Engineers alike.

Bachelor's Hall was the subject of a column written by Jenk's contemporary Ken Milano for his fascinating column "The Rest Is History" in the Fishtown Star. A collection of these columns was published earlier this year by The History Press under the title Remembering Kensington & Fishtown. In Milano's column on the aptly named Bachelor's Hall, a picture is painted of an 18th century gentlemen's club where the young city's abounding Quaker morality was checked at the door.

As reported by Fox 29, Jenk calls the discovery a big deal. In a separate interview by Fox 29, Sugar House's project executive Terry McKenna calls it a "nondescript foundation from the 19th century," refuting Jenk's claim. Right in line with everything that's happened thus far between Sugar House and concerned neighbors, the two sides disagree.

Jenk's evidence, however -- found at Milanos web site -- is strong, and Sugar House is trying to avoid every delay possible so of course their in-house archaeologists disagree. McKenna also says this will not delay Sugar House's construction.

Whatever the case, that's the debate raging at the not-yet-construction site seen in the photo above, taken from the Lovecopter on Monday. Click it, enlarge it, expect it to appear on the next NABR newsletter.

Sugar House's web site, with the Archies song that is a guarantee to be stuck in your head after visiting the site, is HERE.

–B Love


12 November 08: Foliage blitz . . . go!



Longtime readers of Philly Skyline know I'm a big nerd for the four seasons, especially fall. The balance (and extremes) of the four seasons are the reason I love living in Pennsylvania, as opposed to the year-round perfect weather of San Diego, or the biting cold of Chicago's winters, or the dry heat of Phoenix. Fall in Pennsylvania is a vivid explosion of the colors I've described this week, the reds of maples and the oranges of oaks and the yellows of gingkoes, mingling with the already bare browns in the sun and the greens who'll stay green.

Pennsylvania is the Keystone State because of its central location at the head of the arching Atlantic coastline of the original 13 colonies. This is also true of the Appalachian Mountains. Pennsylvania's Appalachians, though they don't feature any significant peaks like Mount Washington or Mount Mitchell, are at the keystone of the range that curves from the Alabama foothills to the Maine-Canada border; the halfway point of the Appalachian Trail is in Pine Grove Furnace State Park, just south of Harrisburg.

My hometown of Tyrone sits on PA's geologic borders of the Allegheny Plateau and the Ridge-and-Valley system. The Piedmont and the Coastal Plain, the next two geologic provinces on the PA Turnpike heading east, share a border in Philadelphia. Each of the four forms its own distinct composition -- thick forest, peaks with multi-valley vistas, rolling farmland and development, big city with a tree covered canopy. There's no better time of year to immerse yourself in them than this.

* * *

It's Philly Skyline Fall Foliage Week. We're backed up at the 5, first-and-ten, and we're in no-huddle offense. The call from upstairs indicates all photos will be click-and-enlargeable. This first play finds us in the Wissahickon.

The stone arch bridge above is recognizable to anyone who's ever swum in Devil's Pool. The bridge extends high above Cresheim Creek, which deposits into the Wissahickon just a few steps below. It was built in 1892 as an aqueduct for a high level interceptor sewer to reduce the raw sewage that was polluting the Wissahickon. While this helped the Wissahickon, the diverted sewage ultimately polluted the Schuylkill River below the dam and Waterworks. For more on the history of this, see Adam Levine's PhillyH2O HERE.

* * *

Elsewhere in the vicinity of the Wissahickon but not in the Wissahickon per se is a place that I'd only previously heard rumor of. Yesterday's low content was due to the time consuming potion and blindfolding I'd been subjected to to find Philadelphia's Magicland. I have no recollection of arriving nor leaving, but I remember tales of puzzle building and creative pygmy labor. And there was something about a Morning on the Wissahiccon. The real Edens of the land lie far away from the track, indeed.

It's all very lovely, and it's all very colorful. It's Magicland.



–B Love

11 November 08: Eleven eleven, peak color



The annual Pennsylvania kaleidoscope doesn't get any better than today, 11/11, Veterans Day, and Ma Nature is seeing to it that we're going to enjoy it. And since it is Veterans Day, this multi-colored post goes out to the guys and gals in the land of brown on the other side of the globe, and to all of you who've come home from there. Thanks for reading Philly Skyline out there in Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan and wherever else you might be beaming in from -- the city of WFCs (World Series Champions) is the city that loves you back. Stay safe over there.

Back home, we're soaking up views like the Schuylkill River from above the Braxton Regatta this past weekend, the final regatta of 2008. Strawberry Mansion Bridge stands just upstream.



Looking across the Schuylkill from East Fairmount Park, on the cliff behind Mount Pleasant, we see Park Plaza. The 23 story condo on Ford Road was designed by Samuel Oshiver, and if the design looks familiar, it's because he designed its sibling, The Philadelphian (at 25th & Pennsylvania), as well as the Claridge and Rittenhouse Savoy on the east and south sides of Rittenhouse Square. His Phillip Murray House is the tallest building in West Oak Lane, and his twin Cherry Hill Towers are the apartment buildings standing guard at the main intersection of the Cherry Hill Mall at Route 38 & Mall Blvd, though they look nothing like they originally did, after a makeover a couple years ago.



This new take on an old favorite is gonna take us home on this short morning post. There are clear skies out there, and that means the reds and oranges and yellows and greens and purples should be at their brightest, so I'm gonna test that theory out. You should too!

–B Love


10 November 08: Coming attractions



At 5:37 on Monday the 10th of November in the year of our Lord two thousand eight, I hereby declare this Philly Skyline Fall Foliage Week. You don't need FoliageNetwork.com to tell you the leaves are in peak form. They are.

It's colorful out there, and the forecast looks good for most of this week. Lace up your boots, grab your camera and get out. We are -- Fall Foliage Week means photos, mad photos. Foggy fall photos, Fairmount Park foliage photos, Philly fly-by photos. Keep it local!

–B Love


10 November 08: SSB Sunset



According to an email circulated by Penn, the South Street Bridge will, at long last, close for reconstruction on December 1st. Looks like we'll find out for sure at 12:30 today when Mayor Nutter holds a press conference with Deputy Mayor for Transportation Rina Cutler, Streets Department Commissioner Clarena Tolson and representatives from PennDOT and the Federal Highway Administration.

We should also find out at that same meeting if the Streets Department and PennDOT are going to be taking the suggestions of the South Street Bridge Coalition, which organized improvement suggestions with Wallace Roberts Todd, supposedly which would still fall under the $50M budget.

According to a posting by the SSB Coalition on Democracy in Action HERE, the suggestions were included in an addendum to the bid package put out by the city. But on the Streets Department's official web site for the bridge HERE, none of the suggestions are to be found.

So we'll see.

I've said for years that the problem with the bridge's stripped down, overly basic design is with funding, but both sides -- the ones planning and building it, and the ones with the grassroots effort and state legislature ties to improve it -- all said that that was not an option and to forget it. So I did.

But can you just imagine what South Street Bridge could look like with a budget only twice the size of its $50M budget? Maybe now, in a fiscal crisis just a couple days after Mayor Nutter's worst-case-scenario budget cut announcement, you can't. But considering this bridge's reconstruction has been on the table since at least 1996, and Congressman Chaka Fattah has done nothing to lobby for a better bridge (it's fully in his district, he holds a powerful position on the House Appropriations Committee, and over 80% of the funding is federal), and considering everything that has changed in those same twelve years -- Center City's rebirth, G-Ho's desirability, the Schuylkill River Park and most importantly, Penn's eastward expansion -- that the South Street Bridge's budget has not increased is selling us all very, very short.

Where would the funding come from? Well since what-ifs are pointless -- namely, all the money that has gone out to the war in Iraq in the past five and a half years -- my own thought was to bid out naming rights. Citizens Bank signed a contract for $95M over 25 years to put its name on the Phillies' ballpark. Think about that. A bank paid a baseball team twice what a bridge's reconstruction is worth to have its name on a ballpark used -- in the best case, like this year's World Series win -- by 46,000 people a day, 88 days a year, for 25 years. South Street Bridge has more users than that per day (tallying cars, cyclists and pedestrians), 365 days a year. The current bridge was built in 1923, so it's been in use for 85 years. Granted, it should have been rebuilt decades ago, but let's say the new bridge's life expectancy is 75 years. That's three times what Citizens Bank is paying the Phillies for.

Picture what a Comcast Bridge designed by Santiago Calatrava would look like. Or an Aramark Bridge. Or a Sunoco Bridge. Or how about this: a Penn Bridge. Penn has absolutely failed in the entire South Street Bridge process. Their hospitals are the bottom line for retaining the expressway ramps, and their eastward expansion sees subterranean parking garages with recreation fields that meet South Street on top, yet they've contributed no money to the bridge.

Even with the South Street Bridge Coalition's recommendations, the new South Street Bridge is going to be a glorified highway overpass with highway overpass funding. Despite its complex dealings over a river and three railroads (CSX, Amtrak, Septa) and under another (Norfolk Southern) and its handling of several utilities, on top of the expressway so central to the reconstruction. The expressway which, by the way, didn't come along until 30+ years after the bridge was built. Despite South Street Bridge's unique placement on the southern end of Center City's multiple bridges across the Schuylkill River, where Philadelphia could assert itself among the world's greatest cities with a fantastic design and iconic bridge with the greatest view of the skyline in the entire city, accessed by the jewel of a park on the river's banks.

Nope. Though it will have a handsome steel meshing that will look nice at sunset, it will still be a glorified highway overpass. We deserve better, and we could have had it.

–B Love





7 November 08. Bookworm update:
A Skyline Skyline and a Philly takeover of New York



Fresh off the devastating news that eleven libraries -- two of them in Southwest Philly, including the important Eastwick branch -- will be closing, Philly Skyline is proud to announce an event at the Skyline Room at the Central Library, which will not be closing (and which will also not be expanding Moshe Safdie's vision any time soon). Nathaniel Popkin's The Possible City, the book that grew as an extension from his column on this web site, comes alive this Saturday afternoon.

Monsieur Popkin will be reading from and signing his book (which by the way features a number of my photos, each one specifically chosen to put a familiar Philadelphia picture to Popkin's narrative). If you still haven't purchased it, what are you waiting for? The Possible City's subtitle, Exercises in Dreaming Philadelphia,, perfectly captures the tone of the 128 page book. Like Philadelphia, dreams aren't always pretty, but like Philadelphia, we're often inspired by them. Hear the author's optimistic vision in his own voice and join us at the Philly Skyline Room at the Library.

Free Library Central Branch, 1901 Vine Street. Saturday, 11/8, 2pm. FREE.

* * *

Everyone who knows Zoe Strauss loves Zoe Strauss. She is without a doubt one of the greatest living Philadelphians, so often taking her Philadelphian view with her. Tara Murtha penned an excellent cover story for the latest Philadelphia Weekly on the forthcoming release of Strauss' book America. Seems Murtha and Strauss are both down for the revolution.

Coinciding with her new book, the Silverstein Photography gallery in New York is hosting an exhibition of her work entitled America: We Love Having You Here (which is seen on a sign in one of her photos). Strauss will be signing books from 6-8pm on opening night, Saturday November 22. Silverstein Photography is at 535 West 24th Street in NYC.

For more info, see Zoe Strauss' blog HERE.

* * *

A short cab ride away, Philadelphia's invasion of the Apple takes root at one of the world's most famous auction houses. Bloomsbury Auctions will on November 19th auction off the Jay T Snider Collection.

The collection, assembled by the Philadelphia businessman Snider, features incredible relics of the city's history from its inception up to the 1876 Centennial. Contained are original deeds from William Penn, a number of maps including one by Penn's surveyor Thomas Holme entitled A Mapp of ye Improved part of Pensilvania in America, Divided into Countyes Townships and Lotts, original runs of Ben Franklin papers and books, and some amazing lithographs including one by Currier & Ives of the Centennial Expo with the city looming in the distance.

The auction is Wednesday the 19th, but the collection will be on display to the public for one week before the auction. The Bloomsbury Auction house is at 6 West 48th Street in Manhattan, and is open Monday-Saturday, 10am-5pm. For more info on the collection, see Bloomsbury's web site HERE.

* * *

It's gonna be a wet one out there this weekend -- pack your parka on your way to the Library!

–B Love


6 November 08: Trumped by reality



Ups and downs, good news and bad news, that's where reality is finding us after our Phillies-Obama merriment.

As reported by Suzette Parmley in Monday's Inquirer, Ivanka Trump announced that her father's organization has "decided to continue construction [of the 45 story Trump Tower Philadelphia] in a more favorable environment," which is code for "dead in the water." This confirms what we can all see with two eyes on the wedge pier right next to Waterfront Square, whose third tower is topped out and nearing completion.

This project's suspension comes less a surprise, given the news of the past several months, than does a Trump admitting it. (Bonus surprise from Allan Domb's bitchslap.) Of all the proposals on the riverfront, maybe only Marina View was less inspiring than Trump. And besides, Philadelphia's done pretty well for itself without one of the Hair Apparent's anywhere-condo properties distracting one's riverfront view like those on the Upper West Side.

Unfortunately, the Trump Tower is an easy casualty of the current economic reality here when compared to what Mayor Nutter outlined on the news at noon today. The closing of over 20% of the city's libraries, including the one here in Fishtown . . . no more free bulk trash pickup . . . a postponement of the cuts in both the wage tax and business privilege tax . . . and this one, as reported by Gelbart Shields and Kerkstra for the Inquirer:
All city departments will be hit, and some, including the Free Library, the Department of Recreation, and the Fairmount Park Commission, are in line for 20 percent budget reductions.
So much for the 40% increase in park funding. This includes the closing of 62 of 73 outdoor pools and 6 of 8 indoor pools.

But, it has to happen. There is no choice. 220 city jobs will be terminated; 600 unfilled positions will be eliminated altogether. City officials, including the mayor, will take pay cuts and be required to take a five-day, unpaid furlough. Times is tough; stakes is high.

It's not all bad out there, though. With any luck, this up-front admission is rock bottom, the economy will rebound under the Obama administration, and like it or not the revenue from two casinos will help to reinstate some of the services we're losing, if not just continue the reduction of the city's notorious taxes.

After the highs of our Phillies-Obama merriment, today's address is a low. So let's take a sampling of good news to help wash it down. Like . . .



Center City District's relighting of the Avenue of the Arts. As they did last year (click image above for photos), CCD has orchestrated a festival of lights just days before this year's Festival of Lights. Wednesday December 17th, beginning at 6pm, CCD, The Lighting Practice, Vitetta, Gordon Electric and Phillips CK will light up eleven buildings on South Broad Street. For full details including a list of buildings, see HERE.

* * *

Rising steadily over the park for which it's named, 10 Rittenhouse Square will be officially topped off next week. That building's construction section was just brought into October, and by this weekend will be brought up to date.

* * *



HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU, you rusty ol' Met.

The Metropolitan Opera House building at Broad & Poplar, now home of the Holy Ghost Headquarters, is this week celebrating its 100th birthday, culminating in a centennial anniversary black tie party this Saturday. The Met was commissioned and built by legendary opera impresario Oscar Hammerstein in 1908, only to be sold off two years later. It was designed by William H McElfatrick, a New York-by-way-of-Chicago architect who specialized in theaters.

The Met didn't last long as an opera house -- according to PAB, the impressive building was first converted to a basketball arena(!) in 1939, a ballroom in 1943, and finally a church in 1948. The Met Church was established in 1955, and the HGH is a descendant of that, active in the building's restoration today.

* * *

While the city was parading with the Phillies on Halloween, the Daily Pennsylvanian's Shawn Aiken dropped a little nugget that The Hub, the orange-chartreuse-brown-silver explosion at 40th & Chestnut that is home to Jose Garces' Distrito, is gearing up for not one, but two expansions to begin next year. Phase 2, to be called The Hub 4001, and phase 3, The Hub 3939, are, as their names suggest, at 4001 and 3939 Chestnut, respectively. The same architects from the first phase, Piatt Associates and Brawer/Hauptman, will work on the new phases as well.

* * *

Finally on this up-n-down Thursday is this Philly Skyline Philly Skyline of the sunset variety, with a skyline-complete Residences at the Ritz-Carlton. The interiors on that building are complete up to the 15th floor right now, and will be complete up to the 30th by the end of this month. Though there is not yet an official move-in date, it's estimated for mid-December. This particular photo was taken from the rooftop of our headquarters a few days ago.



–B Love

NOTES: Rendering of Trump Tower by Alesker & Dundon Architects, accessed at TrumpTowerPA.com; photo of Ivanka Trump by Stuff Magazine; still of Donald Trump from Larry King Live on CNN.


5 November 08: Step into the Street


Two photos, one Broad Street: Phillies Parade and Election Day by Albert Yee. Visit his kickass blog HERE.

by Nathaniel Popkin
November 5, 2008

Outside of the café at 45th and Locust, a gap-toothed man in a Russian ushanka hat laughed. He kicked, danced, and shouted. It was Saturday, late morning, and though the sky burned royal blue, the north-facing sidewalk was still in shade. Nearby, another man, in t-shirt and scruffy beard, was complaining -- not bitterly, merely incredulous to a neighbor's intolerance the night before. "It was only 11:30, Halloween night, as if it's wrong to be having a party! She claims she's never called the police before . . . "

Two tables toward the corner, an amorphous crowd of middle aged men, all of them born in Ethiopia, and with angular, east African faces, and several of them wearing Obama pins, drank espresso and ambivalently watched the scene unfolding across the street, at the restaurant called Abyssinia. The restaurant's owners -- two long-time partners -- were having a dispute. Apparently, they maintain a simple, and pretty elegant, agreement. They alternate management of the restaurant; one runs the place while the other travels home to Africa or attends to separate business. Saturday was switch day -- but for the first time in the 12-year partnership, the keys were not forthcoming.

As the two men argued, one from the café filmed the scene; others sauntered back and forth across the street. More chairs were brought out.

"I told them, this is America, you can't do it that way. You have to have it written down," one of the coffee-drinking men explained to me, and, indeed, lawyers and police officers now appeared before us to interpret the agreement.

Sharing, I suppose, isn't always so easy.

The day before, at just about the same time, I stood with my kids at Broad and Walnut. It was still an hour and a half before the start of the parade. The two of them hung on the bike barricades as the insatiable sidewalk filled. Every few minutes we gazed to the clock on City Hall Tower. "Only an hour and a half to go!"

It was about then that the stern blond-haired lady with the stub nose standing next to me told me to leave. It was her spot, she declared without irony, and she had been there since early in the morning. Oh, I responded, we'll just move over.

An argument ensued, of course, the kind that might pock any day in Philadelphia -- between the pedestrian trying to cross the street and the driver who doesn't obey stop signs, between the bicycler following rules of the road and the driver who tells her incorrectly to get on the sidewalk, between the partier and the woman who can't sleep at night. This is a crowded, public celebration, I said. This isn't your territory. It's everyone's. She told me to save it.

I confess that right then it was me, and not Chase Utley, who inappropriately dropped the f-bomb. And I did it in frustration, not joy. Then I turned my head skyward, and on this marvelous morning, I yelped, and finally turned away from her with a grimace.

Later that day I was back in West Philly, where Obama posters written in Amharic, the Semitic language of Ethiopia -- and which looks a bit like Hebrew -- hung on the wall of the Obama election day office on Baltimore Avenue. Now heading east on the 34 trolley, we came to a stop at 43rd Street, at the entrance to Clark Park. A police car, lights flashing, was blocking the way in order to allow a Halloween parade -- of parents and their kids in costumes, and babies in strollers, and pets, and members of a marching band -- to go by. It was a long procession, probably longer than a standard block. The trolley conductor, who already seemed befuddled, and tired, and ready to snap from the burdens of an inconceivable day, tried to tell his passengers to be patient.

"Yo, around here, in this neighborhood," said one passenger to a friend on the phone, "they all trick or treat together. Yeah, it's University City, you know."

Nearly everyone else sitting around me was also on the phone, and some spoke intemperately, and mean spiritedly, about the goofy uprising of precious children and their careful parents before us. No one on the phone thought them cute.

What struck me most wasn't the anger. The day was charged, after all, and anyone riding SEPTA might have been frustrated. Rather what emerged from the trolley was an overwhelming sense of separateness, as if to some, Clark Park was another, unimaginable world.

Eventually, the conductor threw his arms up in the air and stepped down. The parade stretched out. Down at the stadium, Utley told it straight and Jayson Werth sprang up instinctively, and somehow a million or so, the size of the simultaneous Congolese exodus, filtered out into the expectant night.

* * *

No, sharing isn't easy; it can be ugly, too revealing, perhaps. And yet these past ten days, as never before in recent memory, we have been compelled to leave our own small worlds to head for the street, to face one another.

The city street -- that old notion -- calls us now, to celebrate, to share, confront, to announce. Standing in the center of Broad Street last Wednesday night, and hands numb from slapping, and young men scampering up lampposts like howler monkeys and a couple trying to make love, and toilet paper descending from above, and chants, too, of O-BAM-A, a friend said to me, "I love this. This couldn't happen in Dallas, where I'm from."

Her point was clear enough: the public spectacle, vast and also so intimate, is a response to the city; it begs us out -- to canvas door to door, as so many thousands have done these past few days, to place signs in our windows, where others can see them (the best being a swinging Utley as Obama's face and below it HOPE spelled with the Phillies P), to meet and talk and embrace and cajole and stand together waiting -- for a parade, for the smashing of a giant Trojan Horse, simply to vote -- and all together to yelp and honk long into the night.

Here, and right now, is the revenge of the city long-marginalized in the life of the privatized nation. Obama and Biden, both city dwellers, are ascendant because urban people stepped into the street -- like never before in St. Louis and Denver and Kansas City and Milwaukee -- to gather but also to announce a new America, one not so willing to retreat behind gates and inside of cars, but one with the instinct to work it out in public. Last night, Chicagoans so elegantly emphasized the point.

And isn't the point of Obama's election the hope that faced with difference, we can find common ground?

About midnight, in the still reticent public space around City Hall, hundreds, maybe thousands came to seed the reclamation. There are countless reports of hugs and the still echoing sounds of banging pots and pans announcing the new era upon us.

–Nathaniel Popkin
nathaniel.popkin@gmail.com

For Nathaniel Popkin archives, please see HERE, or visit his web site HERE.

* * *

Chase Utley "HOPE" poster by DJ World Anthems. More info at fiftyonefiftyone.com.



5 November 08: Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike



On second thought, this is pretty great. Spent all my happy energy last week? More a feeling of relief? Whatever, sorry for the apparent ambivalence yesterday. The election of Barack Obama, leaving no room at all for doubt, is a pretty good feeling. One and Two Liberty Place had this city feeling like a place of liberty after the man's acceptance speech.

Philadelphia voted to end the Fairmount Park Commission, which deserves at least a brief moment of sadness, but it unites two governmental agencies, so let's cheer them on as Fairmount Park and the Recreation Department move toward working together to preserve the city's finest natural asset.

There's another city whose finest natural asset was the site of one of the most historic concerts ever in America. A song from that concert about that country is about the best sentiment I could possibly think of today.

–B Love






4 November 08: OMG it's electionz day, or,
why I voted no to charter question #1



Holy moly, it's election day! Didn't anyone tell these poli-yahoos there was a World Series going on the past two weeks?

Back in May 2007, Philly Skyline had good fun participating in the political process, endorsing the progressive underdog Michael Nutter, and when he won that primary, it was a great victory. With his mayoralty, generally speaking, so far so good.

But when the national media assaulted Pennsylvania for a month straight, the bright shiny spotlight showed the mayor's true colors, backing the Democratic machine's shoo-in Hillary Clinton. Governor Rendell's support of her was no surprise. Nutter's, though, definitely was, and it left a very bad taste in my mouth. Barack Obama was the same progressive, inspiring candidate for the entire country that Nutter was for a shrinking city of a million and a half. It's ludicrous to think it was because he was black, rather than what he represented, how he thought, how he spoke, his quickness on his feet.

Hillary won Pennsylvania, by a lot, while the rest of the country stared, and Obama still got the nomination. Nutter and Rendell came around, because they had to. Strange as it is to admit, Michael Nutter, who I like and respect very much, made me like and respect Barack Obama a little less. Obama's speeches and personal interactions and genuine understanding of urban places make me appreciate him, but the election cycle -- the ads, the debates, the ridiculous 24/7 news coverage which is obviously not his fault -- makes me see him as just another politician.

I voted for Obama this morning more because I've been awake the past eight years than because Obama has been inspiring. John McCain is inspiring to many too, an honorable man of service and record (the Keating Five has about as much to do with this election as Reverend Wright and Bill Ayers do), but the fact that he's his party's heir to George Bush after eight years of George Bush is more than enough to not vote for him. And Sarah Palin? If that old man dies and that one becomes our president? God help us all. Hot mama does not make good leader.

Anyway, I've disliked McCain's policies on transit (Amtrak in particular -- why Joe Biden didn't play this up more is puzzling), transportation and energy since the 2000 election. And this doesn't even speak to the war in Iraq and big oil companies.

If there wasn't a financial crisis to deal with, if there wasn't a war we shouldn't be in, and if there was a budget surplus that could magically fix the country's aging infrastructure and give cities our fair share, I might be more inspired by Barack Obama. But since our American reality is cold and ugly, the Shepard Fairey HOPE posters represent my instinct for the Obama presidency, not what his candidacy instills in me. I hope he's as good as the inspired say he is.

* * *

Meanwhile, closer to home is the referendum on the merger of the Fairmount Park Commission and the Recreation Department.

Many a case has been made to support the merger -- the Mayor's, the Inquirer's, the Committee of Seventy's, the Parks Alliance's -- and there are some valid reasons why. Streamlining what appear to be two parallel organizations is in theory a good thing. Combining two organizations also in theory combines two sources of funding. But the issues of redundancy between FPC and Rec have been addressed in the past several years. And cutting one source of income is easier than cutting two.

Why is this being asked now? It seems that very little public dialogue has taken place, last week's citizens forum and yesterday's Radio Times aside. Darrell Clarke wrote the bill that put the question on the ballot? Yeah, that's reassuring. What does Clarke know that we don't? Clarke was the one who listened to Vince Fumo's ranting and raving against the then-Barnes Tower and wrote the legislation to enable a blanket 125' height limit . . . in his district in Center City, the place with the highrises . . . only to turn around and write zoning legislation that allowed the expansion of Westrum's Brewerytown Square at a time when spot zoning was under such scrutiny. And for what it's worth, he's the one who wrote the bill to rezone the American Commerce Center site, having to do so because of his own prior legislation. (I support this particular rezoning, but that he had to do it is illustrative of the problem.)

More important than any of that, though, is Fairmount Park itself. The Fairmount Park Commission is a historic institution, and to see it go on account of politics is extremely sad. Given the park's general high approval (sure it could use some work, but do you know anyone who doesn't love Fairmount Park???), it's fair to say the current Commission does a great job with what it's given. Fairmount Park is a great asset, because it's cared for that way, in spite of funding that famously hasn't been there, funding described by the Parks Alliance itself as "Decades of Budget Neglect". If the mayor and city council are responsible for the budget that has long neglected Fairmount Park, why would we want to turn it over to them? Even greater is the question why when one considers Councilmanic Prerogative and the effect it could have on a city-run park.

Besides, as the Parks Alliance has said, the Mayor has already promised a 40% incremental increase to the Park in the next four years. What's more, as Stephan Salisbury said in his piece for the Inquirer, there is no mention of funding in the ballot question, so are we to believe this changes the allocation of that funding increase? Given the Mayor's admission that the budget isn't going to be what he or any of us were hoping for, are we to believe that proposed increase is gone? If so, why merge one cash strapped organization with another cash strapped organization?

It seems to me that Fairmount Park Commission has been made out to be the straw man here. The "Decades of Budget Neglect" have resulted in the Commission's demolition by neglect. It needs to be propped back up to attain the status it once had.

The matter of land disposition is indeed a fair one. And yes, the issue of Fox Chase Cancer Center vs Burholme Park happened on Fairmount Park's watch -- with City Council's approval. Again, Councilmanic Prerogative is a very serious consideration with regard to Parkland disposition when they will have full control over what comes, stays and goes.

Fairmount Park can and should be improved. And like a lot of problems, that's going to take a lot of money and a lot of leadership. One of the stipulations the last time a merger was proposed was that Commissioners must meet a certain set of requirements in terms of background and expertise. Both of those things -- better funding and a better staff -- can happen without a merger.

Even without a government funding increase, the existing Park Commission can be more proactive about raising funds, perhaps in the form of festivals (at Robin Hood Dell and the Mann Center, for example) or, say, a new attraction like the world's tallest flagpole, with an observation deck and narrative on Philadelphia's ties to flags and flagmaking. Coordination with existing agencies also has room for improvement -- Septa, for example. There's room in Parkside at 52nd Street (where there used to be a train station), at the Zoo and near the Coltrane House for new regional rail stops. The former Park Trolley could also, with a little help from the state or from Washington, be reintroduced, giving people in Center City (i.e. tourists) better incentive to get out into the park.

Either way, what is gratifying about the question's appearance on the ballot is the very importance of open space, the importance of a park system that is by its nature at the heart of the green movement that has gotten such traction over the past few years. Even if Fairmount Park is merged with the Recreation Department, a higher scrutiny will be placed upon the Park. That this question is even on the ballot -- even if Darrell Clarke is behind it -- shows that people truly do care about the future of our parks. I voted No, but even if Yes wins, Fairmount Park will take a higher place in the City's priorities.

–B Love


3 November 08: Monday morning back to business



Guilty as charged: with all the Phillies WFC—World Series Champions excitement of the past few weeks, Philly Skyline has neglected its core Philly Skyline duties. I hope it's a problem that happens in October again, and again, and again.

What we see above are the core 1706 Rittenhouse duties. The super-deep pit of roboto-parking has been built and the core of the soon-to-be 30 story tower at 17th & Rittenhouse Square Street, not long ago a tiny surface parking lot. Its architects Cope Linder, based right here in Philly, have some new renderings at their web site. (When are architecture firms going to realize that people hate Flash web sites? Flash applications are OK, but full-on Flash web sites are extremely annoying.) Click on multi-family residential, then 1706 Rittenhouse. (#3 needs a skyline update!)

* * *

Speaking of Cope Linder, another one of their creations that's been collecting dust for the past several years snuck into the news through the back door while the Phillies were winning the World Series. The Inquirer's Suzette Parmley reported on Thursday that the 1441 Chestnut mixed-use project will now be called the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel & Residences, after that famous luxury hotel in New York. Its parent company, the Waldorf=Astoria Collection (that is not a typo -- that is an equals sign, and it is there on purpose), owned by Hilton Hotels Corporation, has a number of other Waldorf-Astorias planned, including one proposed to reach 107 floors and 1,265' in Chicago.

Ours would be 58 stories and 670', which would make it the sixth tallest building in the city by 2012, unless American Commerce Center bumps it down to seventh by that time. Both of those are big ifs, of course, considering 1441 Chestnut has been happening since 2001. What is new, though, is that it will now strive to achieve a green certification . . . in spite of several above ground parking floors.

Semmi, you have disgraced yourself, and you must be punished. Confine yourself to our royal suite at the Waldorf-Astoria.

[Mariner Commercial Properties.]

* * *



Were it now 2012 and everything happens that's supposed to happen, the King of Zamunda's suite would block this 2008 view of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel & Residences Residences at the Ritz-Carlton. The first residents were supposed to move in this month -- and they may -- but there's still a good deal of work to be done at the Ritz. The south side metal sheathing, seen above, is now complete, and glass has been installed where the crane's mounts were previously. In short, the massing of the tower is complete, and even looks pretty good on the skyline, especially the South Broad Street view during a parade.

* * *



As reported backhandedly last week, the western wall of the existing Pennsylvania Convention Center is a-coming down. When the PACC's expansion gets really going -- there are already some pylons and caissons delivered on the 13th Street side of the property -- this will be one giant monster of a building from 11th Street to Broad Street. Hopefully the 13th Street tunnel will have some nifty feature akin to the 12th Street one with the gong and flashing lights. If that's the bone the PACC threw to Chinatown for decimating a large portion of the neighborhood, and the memorial on 10th Street in the middle of the Vine Street Expressway is the one the neighborhood got for that highway trench, I can't wait to see what they get for the Foxwoods at the Gallery.

* * *



Back over on Rittenhouse Square, we're inching closer to the top of Ten. Todd Three Bean Piggybutt recently told me at Kung Fu Neck Tie that the October contribution to Philly Skyline's 10 Rittenhouse Square construction section is his favorite yet. Jester!

But he's right -- that section is in severe need of an update. The kind folks at Robert A.M. Stern deserve it, Hal Wheeler deserves it for all he's done for Philadelphia, and the hard working people who will purchase the units at 10 Ritt deserve it. Lemme plow through a bunch of photos taken since the last update, and that will be the next update round these parts, scout's honor.

–B Love

Image of 1441 Chestnut / Waldorf-Astoria by Cope Linder Architects.






2 November 08. WFC: World Series Champions
and photos from the parade & ballpark celebration



This is it, the final Phillies feature of the year. There's nowhere else to go -- we're already at the top.

I started playing baseball at the age of 8, a first baseman and pitcher for the now-defunct United Paperworkers International Union, local 1388. In 1987, we won the Tyrone Minor League championship. The following year, I was promoted to Little League, and our Irvin's Trucking team won the 1988 championship. Three years later, our Golden Trucking team blew through Tyrone Teener League (what most places call Babe Ruth League, ages 13-15) on our way to an undefeated championship season. My baseball playing days kinda fizzled in high school (calisthenics? weightlifting???), but I still followed Major League Baseball religiously. Though the Pittsburgh Pirates were the home market, I had no real allegiances as Tyrone cable also carried the independent stations TBS (Braves), WOR (Mets), WGN (Cubs) and even WPIX (Yankees). I just loved baseball -- watching those teams, going to Three Rivers Stadium a couple times a summer, watching the NBC game of the week with Vin Scully and Joe Garagiola, reading the stats in the Sunday Altoona Mirror, collecting baseball cards. I remember where I was for the Bill Buckner error (as a 10 year old at home with my mom the Keith Hernandez fan), Joe Carter's homerun (as a high school senior, long before I was a Phillies fan or the thought of moving here ever entered my mind), the Marlins' extra inning Game 7 (as a 21 year old watching my first World Series at a bar), Big Mac and Sammy (in '98, before the juiced ball myth became the juiced player reality), Johnny Damon's grand slam to cap the Red Sox' comeback from 3-0 to win the 2004 ALCS and break the Curse of the Bambino.

But none of that stuff was as memorable as the past week has been here in Philadelphia. More than any other sport, baseball fandom is a full time commitment, and its greatest award, the World Series title, is sports' greatest reward too. Like Charlie said, that parade down Broad Street is something I'll never, ever forget. After attending 21 games in the regular season (13-8 record), I tasted the victory of five postseason games including two in the World Series. We dreamed it and we did it.

The parade was the ultimate cap to an incredible 2008 season. Tom Gordon's disaster against the Nationals on opening day to start yet another season with a loss. Pat Burrell's strong start and Ryan Howard's weak start. The win against the Mets in the final opener at Shea Stadium. Scoring 20 runs -- twice. Kelly Johnson's 9th inning dropped fly ball in Atlanta to let the Phils back in, with Shane Victorino hitting in the winning run then throwing out the tying run to end the game. Pat's walkoff homerun against the Giants, spoiling Aaron Rowand's return. The 8-7 extra-inning win against the Mets after spotting them a 7-0 lead. (Clay Condrey's double!) Grand Pappy's 16 win season at age 45. Brett Myers' demise, demotion and redemption. Jimmy getting benched in New York. The continued awful interleague play (0-3 vs the Angels, 1-2 vs the Red Sox, Blue Jays, A's and Rangers alike). Greg Dobbs' pinch-hitting prowess. Kyle Kendrick running out of gas and JA Happ picking him up. The frustrating August and the invigorating September, led by RyHo's third straight fiery last-month-of-the-season. Being swept in LA and turning around to sweep LA here. Sweeping the Brewers to pull even in the Wild Card we didn't need. The Mets' second consecutive collapse. Surprisingly cool alternate uniforms for day games. RyHo's league leading homeruns and RBIs. Cole Hamels' domination. Brad Lidge's perfection -- a loss in the All-Star Game as a minor footnote, in part actually contributing to the Phillies being at home for Game 5 of the World Series -- that perfection capped by his flare for drama with a bases-loaded double-play -- Rollins to Utley to Howard -- on the Nats' best player Ryan Zimmerman to clinch the division.

And all of that's just the regular season.

The playoffs . . . Why Can't Us?

Chase Utley's double off of Mike Cameron's glove. Cole Hamels, ace. Brett Myers working a walk from CC Sabathia, followed by Vic's grand slam off of him. J-Roll's leadoff homerun and Pat's two homeruns in Milwaukee.

The Manny Ramirez circus. Brett Myers' 3-for-3. Vic's catch. Vic's homerun. Matt Stairs' homerun. J-Roll's leadoff homerun and Rafael Furcal's three errors in LA. Ryan Madson's 97mph fastball. Harry Kalas' call on the foul-out to Chooch. Cole Hamels, MVP.

The worst-to-first Rays and their Rawhawks and black-rim glasses and oh-my-god-those-cowbells. RyHo's postseason struggles and then World Series breakout. The Phillies' batting average with runners in scoring position. Tim McGraw and Tug McGraw. Carlos Ruiz's game-winning squibber and rock-solid postseason. Mighty Joe Blanton. Fox's awful, awful, awful telecasts. Game 5, part one. The cold rain and the suspension. Bud Selig. The bad vibes in Center City after the suspension. Game 5, part two. Geoff Jenkins. Jayson Werth. Rocco Baldelli. Pat Burrell and Eric Bruntlett and Pedro Feliz. JC Romero. Eric Hinske. Brad Lidge's postseason perfection. The 0-2 pitch. SWING AND A MISS, STRUCK 'IM OUT! THE PHILADELPHIA PHILLIES ARE 2008 WORLD CHAMPIONS OF BASEBALL! (Chris Wheeler dances in background.) Cole Hamels, MVP.

Dancing in the streets -- an all-night party at Frankford & Cottman, on Germantown Ave, on Passyunk Ave, and all down Broad Street, of hugs and high-fives and honkin' and hootin' and hollerin' and that dude on the traffic light getting nailed in the noggin by that 40 bottle. The four-inch William Penn looking down on the 37-foot William Penn.

The Phillies did it. We got our parade. It took some people forever to get there, and Septa didn't get some people there at all. But there we were, a million strong and more, being joyous, not jackasses. More hugs and high-fives and honkin' and hootin' and hollerin' on Broad Street -- strangers were friends, crowded in like a thousand Mummers parades, at the Bellevue and in parking garages and on buildings at South Street and Washington Ave, in rowhomes at Broad & Tasker, with me and my friends at Marconi Plaza.



After a full, dramatic and exciting 2008 baseball year, this past week has been the greatest in my sports watching 32-year life. My wife said "my face hurts from smiling so much." My Phillies -- our Phillies -- won the World Series. As a final celebration, I've put together a "season in photos" which begins HERE. My photos of the parade, from both Marconi Plaza and at the Steve Carlton gate of Citizens Bank Park, are on page 10 HERE, with the final farewell at the ballpark on the following page HERE.

* * *

Pat Gillick will ride off into the sunset a champion. Pat Burrell will ride off on his clydesdales bittersweetly to somewhere new a champion. Ruben Amaro, sigh, will take over and be charged with building a team to defend its World Series title. Beerleaguer, The 700 Level, The Fightins, We Should Be GMs and Balls, Sticks & Stuff will be there to dissect, analyze, lament and celebrate. So will yr Skyline. That's all in the future . . . for now, let's have another sip of that champagne.

The 2008 Philadelphia Phillies: WORLD FUCKING CHAMPIONS.



–B Love


1 November 08: ATTENTION CALENDAR OWNERS

IMPORTANT PROGRAMMING NOTE!




Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and especially loyal customers: it has been brought to my attention by fellow Hall & Oates fanatic Allison Borden Collings that, on this month's calendar (pictured above), the mini-December in the lower right is off by a day. For this I sincerely apologize and thank Mrs ABC for this observation. Last year's proofreader has been fired, so consider it a Philly Skyline promise to NOT make this mistake on next year's calendar. Which, by the way, will be available very soon. Details will be posted right here on this web site just as soon as they're available.

In the meantime, just strike your Sharpie through the Sunday column in the mini-December and shift those days over to Saturday.

Also, for what it's worth, the photo in your November calendar was taken at sunset on November 11th last year, so in the next week or two you might want to fire up the camera and head to the Plateau for that fantastic fall foliage Comcast Center reflection photo. According to Foliage Network, we're in "high color" right now, with peak color right around the corner. Yr Skyline's got something special planned for peak color, so don't stray too far from the computer unless you promise to hike the Wissahickon.

–B Love












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