Philadelphia City Paper, January 23rd, 2014 by Philadelphia City Paper

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cpstaff We made this

Publisher Nancy Stuski Editor in Chief Lillian Swanson Senior Editor Patrick Rapa Arts & Culture Editor Mikala Jamison Digital Media Editor/Movies Editor Paulina Reso Food Editor/Listings Editor Caroline Russock Senior Staff Writers Daniel Denvir, Emily Guendelsberger Staff Writer Ryan Briggs Copy Chief Carolyn Wyman Associate Web Producer Carly Szkaradnik Contributors Sam Adams, Dotun Akintoye, A.D. Amorosi, Rodney Anonymous, Mary Armstrong, Meg Augustin, Bryan Bierman, Shaun Brady, Peter Burwasser, Mark Cofta, Alison Dell, Adam Erace, David Anthony Fox, Caitlin Goodman, K. Ross Hoffman, Deni Kasrel, Alli Katz, Gary M. Kramer, Drew Lazor, Gair “Dev 79” Marking, Robert McCormick, Andrew Milner, Annette Monnier, John Morrison, Michael Pelusi, Sameer Rao, Elliott Sharp, Marc Snitzer, Tom Tomorrow, John Vettese, Nikki Volpicelli, Brian Wilensky Editorial Interns John Corrigan, Taylor Farnsworth, Melvin Hayes, Sara Patterson, Brooks Phelps, Julie Zeglen, Larry Miller Production Director Michael Polimeno Editorial Art Director Reseca Peskin Senior Designer Evan M. Lopez Editorial Designers Brenna Adams, Jenni Betz Staff Photographer Neal Santos Contributing Photographers Jessica Kourkounis, Mark Stehle Contributing Illustrators Ryan Casey, Don Haring Jr., Joel Kimmel, Cameron K. Lewis, Thomas Pitilli, Matthew Smith Human Resources Ron Scully (ext. 210) Circulation Director Mark Burkert (ext. 239) Sales & Marketing Manager Katherine Siravo (ext. 251) Account Managers Colette Alexandre (ext. 250), Nick Cavanaugh (ext. 260), Amanda Gambier (ext. 228), Sharon MacWilliams (ext. 262), Megan Musser (ext. 215), Stephan Sitzai (ext. 258) Office Coordinator/Adult Advertising Sales Alexis Pierce (ext. 234) Founder & Editor Emeritus Bruce Schimmel

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contents Cover story, see p. 14

Naked City ...................................................................................6 A&E................................................................................................20 Movies.........................................................................................26 Agenda........................................................................................28 Food ..............................................................................................33 COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY NEAL SANTOS DESIGN BY RESECA PESKIN

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naked

the

city

thebellcurve CP’s Quality-o-Life-o-Meter

[ 0]

Once it’s built, the new Comcast tower will be the largest building in the U.S. outside New York and Chicago. And that sentence was just named the whiniest factoid in the history of Philadelphia.

[ + 2 ] SEPTA says it will soon replace the cloth

seats on the Market Frankford El with fiberglass seat panels. “Also, we’re gonna keep the same poo-n-bile color scheme. What? Blue? Are you sure? My god.”

[ + 1 ] Police arrest the so-called Swiss Cheese

Pervert, a 41-year-old man from Norristown. “I’m setting the example. What I’ve done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed forever,” he says. “Especially if somebody orders something with Swiss cheese in it, like a Reuben. I’ve pretty much ruined certain kinds of sandwiches for some people.”

NO-BRAINER: Vanessa Jerolmack thought her plan to open a taco stand on her commercially zoned lot would be easy. Instead, it turned into an eight-month battle.

[ - 2 ] Gov. Corbett nominates Councilman Bill

Green to head the School Reform Commission, a move Mayor Nutter calls “perplexing.” “What’s that? No, I was just talking about the Dexter finale, which I finally got around to watching. So terrible it boggles the mind,” continues Nutter. “This School Reform decision, however, is pretty much par for the course for Corbett. The dude’s basically my personal Dark Passenger. That’s a Dexter reference.”

[ 0]

A movie based on the Hot Wheels brand of toys will be filmed in Philly later this year. Director Simon Crane assures fans that all cars in the film will be able to fly when their doors are open. The Pennsylvania state Senate’s Judiciary Committee votes unanimously to ban the posting of revenge porn on the web. Whatever. The plots are better in clemency porn anyway.

[ - 2 ] A large sinkhole opens up in the middle of

a street in Northern Liberties and swallows a Dodge Ram. Bell Curve staff hopes the city finds a permanent solution soon to this problem of people thinking it’s OK to live in the city and own a giant truck.

This week’s total: -1 | Last week’s total: -8 6 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

MARK STEHLE

[ zoning ]

GUAC BLOCK As City Council moves to simplify the zoning code, an attempt to open a taco stand in West Philly shows how overlappping civic groups complicate the process. By Ryan Briggs he battle to simplify the city’s zoning code can seem like a game of tug of war — as quickly as reforms are made, some City Council members line up to undo them. Today, Council is expected to vote on a bill Councilman Bobby Henon has introduced that would tip the scales, at least a little, back toward simplicity. Henon’s bill seeks to set firmer boundaries for the civic organizations, known as Registered Community Organizations or RCOs, that get to weigh in on the zoning process. Their number and influence have exploded in recent years, thanks to some poorly crafted regulations during the last series of “tugs” on Council. While Henon’s proposal could sound like an attempt to curtail community input, the recent travails of a food-truck owner in West Philadelphia shows that his revisions may not be coming soon enough. Vanessa Jerolmack had a simple vision: To turn a vacant lot she owned on Baltimore Avenue, near 51st Street, into a permanent headquarters for her nomadic taco truck. A native Angeleno with a flair for Mexican cuisine, she debuted her mobile restaurant last spring.

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The empty lot was adjacent to her home and she and her husband had planted a garden there for years. They soon discovered it was zoned for use as a restaurant. Combining the commercially zoned land with her blossoming business seemed like a no-brainer. Of course, in Philadelphia things that seem like they should be easy rarely are. Although the approvals Jerolmack needed from the city were routine — variances to allow the sale of takeout food and to erect a fence around the lot — she was required to notify nearly all the neighbors within a block of her property and meet with a bevy of RCOs, each with the power to send influential letters of support or opposition to the zoning board. “I contacted all the RCOs that I knew were always involved with zoning meetings in the past,” Jerolmack, a seven-year resident of Cedar Park, wrote in an email. “I was not aware that there were actually six RCOs for this neighborhood!” And that was only counting the “local” RCOs. In Jerolmack’s case, there were almost twice as many “issue-based” RCOs — wide-ranging groups that don’t necessarily attend neighborhood zoning meetings, but must be notified about variance requests. The city’s zoning laws place the onus on applicants to figure out which RCOs have an interest in a given property, a task that can be difficult because there is no limit on how many can be involved in a given area and many places in the city have numerous overlapping groups. One spot, 40th

She needed only routine variances.

>>> continued on page 8

[ is digging out of the snowstorm] [ a million stories ]

✚ NOT SO FAST Philadelphia won’t be entering into a contract to create an Office of Conflict Counsel right away after all. Mayor Michael Nutter’s press secretary, Mark McDonald, said in an email that the apparent winning bidder did not have the same name at the start of the process as at the end, so the contract can’t be issued legally. The City Code requires that the name of the entity submitting the bid, which is entered into the municipal eContract Philly system, to have the same name as the entity with whom the city contracts. Philadelphia attorney Daniel-Paul Alva’s bid appeared to be the winner to start a new Office of Conflict Counsel in Philadelphia. However, Alva and his former partner on the project, Scott DiClaudio, bid for the conflict-counsel work as Alva & Associates LLC. DiClaudio left the project following a flap over controversial social-media postings he made. The city said in a statement that the name of Alva’s firm is the Law Offices of Daniel P. Alva. The difference in the two names has stopped the contract process for now. “In no way does this reflect on the proposal to establish a Conflict Counsel Office,” McDonald wrote. “The administration is committed to carrying this out. Nor does it reflect on the quality of the proposal from Mr. Alva. But the rules are clear.” All of this means the city will have to begin the bid process again from scratch. Alva wrote in an email that he will resubmit his bid and “hopefully will be chosen again.”

The city announced on Dec. 31 its intention to contract with Alva & Associates, which would create a for-profit law firm to represent criminal defendants and family-court defendants when the Defender Association of Philadelphia, Community Legal Services or the Support Center for Child Advocates is already representing another person in the case. The new firm was to handle the first appointments in criminal cases and juveniledelinquent cases in which the Defender Association has a conflict, and to represent the primary caregiver in every dependency case, Alva said in an interview earlier this month. The firm, which bid $9.5 million, would have taken all new appointments starting March 1. The plan has generated opposition from many quarters, including Councilman Dennis O’Brien. O’Brien’s director of legislation and policy, Miriam E. Enriquez, said in an interview that her office was pleased the process is starting over and that it hoped the next iteration of conflict-counsel representation makes “sure the constitutional rights of the indigent are preserved and protected.” Alva said he didn’t plan to make a profit from city tax dollars but from fees earned by referring clients in other types of matters. In addition to Alva & Associates, there were four other bidders for the contract in the first round: Ahmad & Zaffarese & Smyler, AskPhillyLawyer.com, Montoya Shaffer and Sokolow & Associates, according to the city’s notice.

The Office of Conflict Counsel hits a snag.

—Amaris Elliott-Engel

photostream ➤ submit to photostream@citypaper.net

CHECKMATE: Time for a friendly game of chess at an afterschool program at Girard College. The photographer took this image as part of a Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service project for the Philadelphia Photo League. MATT COHEN

hostilewitness By Daniel Denvir

HASTY RETREAT ➤ TOM CORBETT COULD not escape the ugly headlines last Friday when he beat a hasty retreat from his planned visit to Central High School. The Republican governor, whose approval ratings have tanked — in part because of his massive cuts to public eduction — needed to make sure his opponents could no longer say that he had never visited a Philly public school. Because he hasn’t. Not once. But there was a large demonstration outside Central, and students were planning their own protest indoors. That, too, would look bad. So Corbett cancelled the event at the very last minute and, in doing so, turned a difficult political moment into a self-inflicted public-relations meltdown. He told reporters gathered at a relocated press conference in Center City that he had “decided not to engage in the theatrics that have been designed by adults within and outside the system.” But it was Corbett who had planned to use students as props for political theater for his troubled 2014 reelection campaign. “No adults put us up to anything,” tweeted Kirstie Floyd, an 18-year-old Central senior. “He just switched up last minute so the masses wouldn’t have time to get to where he went.” If Corbett cannot stomach visiting a top-ranked magnet school like Central, it’s impossible to imagine him visiting a neighborhood school that is suffering even more from the widespread layoffs of teachers, nurses and counselors. Meanwhile, Corbett will continue to manage the schools’ implosion through his proxies on the state-run School Reform Commission, which he nominated city Councilman Bill Green to chair. In the past, Green has been a strong advocate of school vouchers and charters. His appointment prompted a blistering attack from Mayor Michael Nutter, who called it “frankly perplexing given his votes against some education-funding measures and his published views on public education.” Nutter’s comments were welcome but frankly perplexing too, since the mayor has also been a proponent of privately oriented reform measures. Tellingly, when pressed, Green declined to say whether he thought Corbett had harmed public education.The two should plan to visit a Philly public school together. But next time, Corbett should come with money in hand to pay for the education these students deserve. (daniel.denvir@citypaper.net)

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✚ Guac Block

[ the naked city ]

<<< continued from page 6

and Lancaster Avenue, has 23 RCOs converging on a single intersection. Jerolmack admits that it was “purely [her] mistake” for not researching the neighborhood groups, but what seemed like a simple oversight would soon turn into a big headache. Gregory Lyles, a representative from a local RCO she failed to contact, Southwest Philadelphia District Services (SPDS), heard that she was meeting with other groups. “[He] went to my zoning hearing and forced me to postpone the proceedings because I had not met with his group,” she said. “No one among the active community RCOs had ever heard of this SPDS group.” Perhaps Jerolmack could be excused for not being familiar with SPDS: It had only recently registered as an RCO and claimed a territory that stretched from the Philadelphia airport to 30th Street Station, encompassing all of Southwest and almost half of West Philadelphia. In a phone interview Lyles says the boundaries were drawn from where SPDS members “lived, worked or went to school.” Lyles acknowledged he lives in West Oak Lane and that many of the group’s members had grown up in the area, but didn’t necessarily still live there. He asserted that his group’s interest in the area — and Jerolmack’s business — was evidenced by its headquarters inside the nearby Kingsessing Rec Center, where SPDS runs a chess club and pee wee football league. Strangely, the rec center’s address does not appear on the group’s RCO application — their two official contacts are listed as Lyles’ home and a vacant storefront at 5213 Woodland Ave. Even stranger, SPDS’s financial disclosure documents list the group’s headquarters as a home in Pottstown owned by SPDS President Michael Ross. Whatever their connection to the neighborhood, when Jerolmack finally scheduled a meeting with SPDS (and all of the other local RCOs, again), she says Lyles got straight to the point. “[Lyles] only asked me how my business would benefit them and what I would donate to their organization,” she said. “I told him that I would love to help my community, but I am a brand-new, tiny establishment and I couldn’t offer much.” But representatives of other RCOs went further, loudly protesting that Lyles’ requests were verging on illegality. Jerolmack says Lyles pressed on, eventually “suggesting [he] would not support my zoning request unless I promised to support him with money or donations.” Lyles, for his part insists he “didn’t ask for a cash donation” and just “suggested” different activities at the rec center Jerolmack could support. “We told them the different [activities] they could donate some time or something toward,” he said. “Then, it was also said that some people make cash donations to our organizations. And you can write it 8 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

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off on your taxes.” The meeting ended with all parties aggrieved. Lyles said he thought Jerolmack “didn’t support the community” and opposed her variance in a letter to the Zoning Board of Adjustment. The other RCOs were more sympathetic, and the zoning board approved the variance — but the eight-month ordeal left a bad taste in Jerolmack’s mouth. Ultimately, she said she was less upset about Lyles’ actions than the redundant and generally “frustrating” RCO process. Councilman Henon says his bill will address at least some of the issues she encountered. The bill would eliminate issue-based RCOs from neighborhood meetings, and require the Planning Commission to deliver applicants a list of the RCOs they need to contact. Council members could select a

The bill would clarify RCO boundaries. “coordinating RCO” that would rally other groups for a single meeting. Henon’s proposal would also limit the geographic size of local RCO groups to no more than 20,000 properties — which would force SPDS, for example, to cut its service areas by a third. “We’re adding definition and clarity to the boundaries of an RCO, because right now, there are none,” Henon said. “It’s to make them a little more accountable to the community they’re supposed to be representing.” It’s far from perfect. There’s still no cap on how many RCOs can be in a single area, and Council members will continue to have an outsize influence throughout the zoning process. But it’s a start. Or at least another tug in the right direction. (ryan.briggs@citypaper.net)

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EMPANADAS ROSARIO 4649 N. FIFTH ST. • 267-331-6319

HOURS: 9 a.m.–10 p.m. daily RECOMMENDED DISHES: Empanadas, yaroa, roast chicken, Dominican hot dogs and burgers.

ALONG A FAIRLY GLOOMY STRETCH of used-tire emporiums and worse-for-wear corner stores, metal palm trees start popping up on North Fifth Street as you head toward Olney. And while the tropical vibes are decidedly urban, there are Latino flavors on this street that you can’t find anyplace else in the city. It’s a lively community of Latin American hubs that’s home to a serious concentration of good eats, like sweet plantains stuffed with meaty picadillo, Dominican hot dogs, guava-filled pastries and Philly-meets-Puerto Rico pork sandwiches.

he three-month-old Empanadas Rosario is a Dominican snack mecca. Sure, there are juicy, whole-roasted pollos a la brasa to take home for dinner with pints of white rice and red beans, but Rosario’s real draw is a selection of killer apps. There are blisteringly crisp empanadas filled with beef, chicken and cheese and hot dogs served on hoagie rolls with spiced ground beef, corn kernels, slaw and a sweet mayonnaisey dressing. And then there is yaroa, a heaping takeout box piled high with the Dominican version of poutine — think French fries or sweet plantains finished with meat and cheese and crisscrossed with a psychedelic swirl of ketchup, mustard, mayo and Rosario’s secret sauce; Dominican burgers with cabbage and salsa rosa; and juices in exotic flavors like soursop, green banana and sapote. With a bulletproof Plexiglas divider at the counter, Empandas Rosario doesn’t come across as the friendliest of neighborhood joints but the owners do a brisk takeout business, giving their steady stream of customers a familiar back and forth.

WORDS BY CAROLINE RUSSOCK PHOTOS BY NEAL SANTOS

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PORKY’S POINT 3824 N. FIFTH ST. • 215-221-6243

ith no shortage of cheesesteaks, hoagies and roast pork sandwiches, we all know that Philadelphia is a sandwich town. With its drive-up corner locale at the intersection of Rising Sun Avenue and North Fifth Street, no-nonsense counter ordering and old timey signage, Porky’s Point looks like any number of cheesesteak spots around town. But Porky’s is another beast entirely. Open for nearly 40 years, Porky’s has melded two glorious traditions — the iconic Philadelphia roast pork sandwich and Puerto Rican lechon, a whole roasted pig with crisp-lacquered skin and melting flesh. At Porky’s, a game-changing roast pork sandwich runs you $7.50 and is made in plain sight with a big piece of fatty pork, skin and all, hacked up on the counter and sandwiched into a long roll. You can finish it off with a barbecue or vinegary hot sauce. “We don’t make it here,” explains the counter guy, “but be careful, it’s hot.” Of course, the pork sandwich is only the beginning of Porky’s menu. There are chewy, salty deep-fried pork chops, whole sweet plantains (baked, split down the middle and filled with a beefy picadillo), creamy-on-the-inside papas rellenas and doughy half-moon pastellios with beef, chicken or pork. Pernil (more roasted pork), blood sausage and chicken gizzards are sold by the pound, and pig’s ear combos come with your choice of boiled bananas or mofongo (garlicky mashed plantains). The ordering window opens every day at 8 a.m. for sorultos (breakfasty corn fritters) and the full menu is served until the pork runs out, usually around 9 p.m.

HOURS: Sun.–Thu., 8 a.m.–9 p.m.; Fri.–Sat., 8 a.m.–10 p.m. RECOMMENDED DISHES: Roast pork sandwiches, fried pork chops, pastellios, mofongo.

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COLOMBIAN BAKERY 4944 N. FIFTH ST. • 215-455-5130

olombian Bakery’s colorful and bustling storefront serves as a coffee shop, meet-up spot and place for a quick bite. The glass cases are stocked with an everchanging assortment of Colombian pastries: round roscónes filled with magenta swirls of guava paste, baseball-sized buñuelos fresh from the fryer, and pandebono with sweet cheese. Behind the counter, the smiling ladies of the bakery froth up milky cups of café con leche (Colombian coffee, of course) and the fridges are stocked with a Technicolor assortment of Postobón sodas — neon yellow piña (pineapple), lavender-hued manzana (apple) and the intriguingly named, bright orange kola (nothing like Coke or Pepsi). Another refrigerator holds squeaky wheels of queso Colombiano, squares of syrupy flan and cheese-filled corn cakes ready to pop in the oven. Behind the counter are candy jars filled with SuperCoco lollipops and Colombina Coffee Delight hard candies. In a warm display case sit little paper trays of chicharrón, crunchy deep-fried pork belly chunks, big nobs of salchichon (like a South American Spam) and best of all, perfectly uniform, crescent-shaped, corn-yellow empanadas. Their corn-dough exteriors are filled with shreds of tender beef or chicken and little bits of soft potato. These perfect little empanadas are served with a side of Colombian Bakery’s bright ají, a spicysour sauce made of finely chopped scallions, chiles, tomatoes and vinegar.

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HOURS: Mon.–Sat., 5 a.m.–8 p.m.; Sun., 6 a.m.–4 p.m. RECOMMENDED DISHES: Empanadas, salchichon, pandebono, Colombian sodas.

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EL SABOR DE MARIA 4903 N. FIFTH ST. • 215-329-5166 • ELSABORDEMARIA.COM

he most popular destination by far on North Fifth Street is Tierra Colombiana, a massive restaurant and nightclub. But it’s hardly the only Colombian restaurant on this stretch of Fifth Street. El Sabor de Maria is a little storefront eatery with colorful murals lining the walls and tables of families and friends enjoying plates piled high with comidas tipicas Colombianas. Meals at El Sabor de Maria begin with empanadas and little arepas served with garlicky links of Colombian chorizo. Along with a fridge full of Colombian sodas, El Sabor blends juices to order with ingredients like passion fruit and lulo, a nightshade that flavor-wise lands somewhere between lime and rhubarb and is totally magical when whipped with milk and sugar. The plates at El Sabor are no-joke comforting, hearty and big enough to satisfy the hungriest of camioneros (that’d be truck drivers, for non-native speakers). Bowls of sancocho de gallina are overflowing with hunks of potato, yuca and rounds of yellow corn still on the cob. The bandeja paisa (literally countryman’s tray) brings to mind a full English breakfast with a sizable link of chorizo, a slab of char-grilled steak, a slab of chicharrón, a fried egg, a wedge of avocado, fried plantain and a hefty serving of white rice and long-simmered beans. Flank steak at El Sabor comes in the form of sobrebarriga, braised until fork-tender and served with a tomatoey criolla sauce with flecks of onion and bell pepper. All entrees come with a no-frills but remarkably palate-cleansing salad dressed simply with white vinegar. (caroline@citypaper.net)

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HOURS: Daily, 11 a.m.–8 p.m. RECOMMENDED DISHES: Empanadas, arepa con

chorizo, bandeja paisa, sobrebarriga, fresh juices.

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artsmusicmoviesmayhem

icepack By A.D. Amorosi

➤ I’M ALL FOR high concept, whether it’s an idea that drives an aesthetic endeavor, a social climb, a medical postulation or a psychological solution. The bolder and simpler, the better. That’s why I like the sound of Ardmore playwright Nicholas Wardigo’s new work, Snowglobe, about two women stuck in a small space talking about faith and science. Should be exquisitely dramatic and thought-provoking. “To me, the theme and setting of this play are interconnected,” says Wardigo. “When your entire reality fits inside a space 15 feet in diameter, asking ‘why’ is a natural reaction. Everyone, sooner or later, questions their own world. But, when you live in a snow globe, that question becomes simpler.” (So must the stage design, to some extent.) That’s not to say that answers are easier to find just because there’s less room to look for them. “You can, however, discount a lot of possibilities with more certainty by merely looking around,” says the playwright. Snowglobe’s world premiere starts Jan. 23 at Bainbridge’s Shubin Theatre.Along with the joy of Wardigo’s script, having Charlotte Northeast and Amanda Schoonover, two of Philly’s best actresses, in any space is promising. (See p. 28 for more.) ➤ Know what was a good idea in its time? The Vesper Club. Started in 1901, its purpose was to bypass the Quaker “blue laws” which forbade serving alcohol on Sundays and Election Day. A little antiquated? Sure. Filled with old white men? Possibly. But the Vesper Club was still a cheery respite for outlaws who sought to eat and booze away from the rest of the world. Philly’s oldest private dining club shut its doors (at 223 S Sydenham St.) in 2012. Vesper Club members got a reprieve in 2012 when the Racquet Club (nearby at 215 S. 16th St.) offered a private dining room and a shared bar space.The problem? There’s no smoking at the Racquet Club and the Vespugees felt as if their freedoms were being squelched. So they pulled up stakes early last year, leaving the Racquet and putting their boozing/smoking lifestyle in a tailspin. Anyway. The Vesper’s original location (once up on SSH Real Estate’s spot for $5 million, then $3.9 million) has remained empty until now; rumor has it somebody’s looking to open an intimate, possibly private or speakeasy-ish saloon. I happened to stop by and noticed that they’re pulling out old furnishings and battered rugs and such. Could a Vesper Club 2 or some new-style smoking/drinking codger be cashing in, or is the ever-growing Misconduct Tavern on Locust just expanding out its back door? ➤ More ice at citypaper.net/nakedcity. (a_amorosi@citypaper.net) 20 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

BOY TO MAN: Director Richard Linklater filmed actor Ellar Coltrane over the course of 12 years for the ambitious Boyhood.

[ movies ]

’DANCE WITH THE DEVIL Linklater, Fassbender and wicked mindbenders at Sundance. By Sam Adams undance doesn’t live up to its reputation for launching exciting new talents into the world every year, but in the span of five hours on the festival’s first Friday, it did it twice. Frank isn’t director Lenny Abrahamson’s first feature, but the story of a struggling musician (Domhnall Gleeson) who falls in with an underground rock band fronted by a singer in a giant papier-mâché head hit Park City like a bolt from the blue. Introducing the world premiere, Sundance Festival director John Cooper said the festival had never tracked a film through a development process as long as the one that brought Frank to the screen, and it’s not hard to imagine why. It’s a fantastically weird story about artistic isolation, made concrete by the fact that the singer never removes his mask, even showering with it on and taking meals through a tube. Underlining the film’s delightful perversity is the fact that the head sits on the shoulders of Michael Fassbender, one of the world’s most beautiful men, who manages to give a brilliant comic performance without ever showing his face. Fassbender’s name and Frank’s loopy premise was enough to fill Sundance’s massive Eccles Theatre, but Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook was unveiled at the festival’s iconic but tiny Egyptian

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Theatre, which meant that fewer than 200 people saw the first public screening of a full-blown masterpiece by a hitherto unknown auteur. Pitched somewhere between a Roald Dahl yarn and Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, it’s the story of a widowed mother (Essie Davis) and her 6-year-old son (Noah Wiseman), who are still reeling from the death of the boy’s father, who was killed driving a pregnant Davis to the hospital. For six years, Davis has contrived to divorce her son’s birthday from the day of her husband’s death, but with his seventh approaching, the walls that have kept her grief at bay are beginning to crumble. At first, she imagines the creature haunting her worn-down house to be a figment of her son’s imagination, but the arrival of a mysterious children’s book gives it form and power, and shifts The Babadook from being the story of a mother driven nearly mad by her son’s obsessions to one of a woman possessed and nearly destroyed by loss. Jeremiah Zagar, whose first documentary, In a Dream, was about his father, mosaic muralist Isaiah Zagar, returned with Captivated: The Trials of Pamela Smart, which uses the real-life case that inspired To Die For as a lens to view how a media-besotted culture turns crimes into narratives that gradually infect and supplant the truth. Smart, a high-school administrator who was convicted of hiring her teenage lover to murder her husband, became the center

A full-blown masterpiece by an unknown.

>>> continued on page 22

[ desperately trying to feel normal ] soundadvice

[ album reviews ]

➤ bill callahan | B-

➤ king louie | B

The way Bill Callahan intones his lyrics with that steady, laconic, somewhat eternal-seeming baritone, they have a tendency to drift lazily by, sometimes more felt than fully, consciously registered. Have Fun With God (Drag City), therefore — a no-foolin’ dub (though not reggae) rework of last year’s Dream River wherein about half the lines are either excised or drift off into limitless eddies of reverb — plays like a Zen koan approximation of the actual expe—K. Ross Hoffman rience of listening to a Bill Callahan record.

If the nihilism of drill music (wastelands are supposed to produce what else exactly?) bothers you, then Drilluminati 2 (self-released) won’t provide relief. Peep this cartoonish shock-horror guest bar from Lil Herb: “I don’t got feelings/ Whack a nigga and put dick in his sister.” In other words, shelf your moralizing and just listen to how King L adds bop, agile flows, first-class sloganeering/hook invention and an expanded sonic palette to the holy trinity of triple-time hi-hats, propulsive bass and loaded synths. —Dotun Akintoye

➤ alcest | B The guitar melodies and vocal harmonies on Shelter (Prophecy Productions), the fourth album by French more-shoegaze-thanblack-metal band Alcest, are glistening and angelic. The climaxes are heavenward and captivating and, no matter how strongly you resist, you will be persuaded that life is filled with wonder and warmth. But unless you speak French, you won’t know what the hell vocalist Neige is singing about. Doesn’t matter. —Elliott Sharp

flickpick

By Marc Snitzer

➤ doug paisley | A Like most of The Band, Doug Paisley’s a Canadian musician with a deep love for the American South. So it’s fitting Band vet Garth Hudson guests on a few tunes from Strong Feelings (No Quarter), Paisley’s third and strongest LP. Standout “What’s Up Is Down” is a Music Row-vibing duet with Mary Margaret O’Hara featuring Hudson’s romantically stumbling piano shimmers and a majestic sax solo. These songs will help mend your broken heart so you can go break it again. —Elliott Sharp

[ movie review ]

THE PAST [ A- ] IN THE FINAL MOMENTS of The Past, Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi’s

follow-up to the justly acclaimed A Separation, the memory of a perfume’s scent is movingly revived, becoming an apt summation of how the past lingers in the air as an elusive yet unavoidable impression. At the center of Farhadi’s terse, quietly harrowing melodrama is a fragmented family coming to terms with its own inescapable history. The title may be a touch too spot-on, as is the opening scene in which Ahmad (Ali Mosaffa) returns to France from Iran to finalize his divorce from Marie (Bérénice Bejo). The two reunite on opposite sides of a glass barrier, visually belaboring the gulf between them — which, as it turns out, isn’t nearly as transparent as that wall implies. They still care about each other, despite Marie’s engagement to Samir (Tahar Rahim of A Prophet). It’s not only their history together that threatens everyone’s fragile happiness, however. Samir is married to a woman in a coma, which binds his new relationship to his wife’s trapped consciousness. The cause of her vegetative state is just one of the film’s secrets, some shared, some grasped tightly by a single person, which slowly emerge. For Farhadi, the titular past is a bomb that’s already exploded; he’s most interested in examining those living through its fallout. While The Past lacks the deep moral complexities of its predecessor, it is, in some ways, a more unyielding piece, its characters harder to read even as their motives are made known. Like its subjects, the film is unwilling to give itself up easily. Its stubborn richness seems to argue that, if it can take a lifetime to truly get to know another person, why should a story fully reveal itself in the span of two hours? As the film continues to bloom in the mind weeks later, it’s a question hard to ignore. —Shaun Brady

The past is an exploded bomb.

IT’S COMPLICATED: Marie (Bérénice Bejo) wants to marry Samir (Tahar Rahim), but they have other spouses to consider.

ACHE WITH ME ➤ TRANSGENDER DYSPHORIA BLUES, the first full-length album from Florida punk band Against Me! since frontwoman Laura Jane Grace came out as transgendered, is surely one of the most important rock albums of this decade. As always, Against Me! keeps things short and tight; TDB delivers 10 songs in just under half an hour. And, sonically, it doesn’t stray far from Against Me!’s practiced wheelhouse: blistering, refined punk rock. But it’s the urgency and clarity in Grace’s lyrics — some 33 years in the making — that position this album as a howling queer voice in the widely straight and cisgendered boy’s-club wilderness. True, Against Me! has always been a vaguely LGBTQ-oriented band. Older songs “The Disco Before the Breakdown” and “Violence” and “The Ocean,” alluded to coming out, shame and gender dysphoria, respectively. The themes have always been danced around, easy to shrug off as speculative, as writing exercises. “If I could have chosen/ I would’ve been born a woman” (from 2007) lacks the assertion and self-awareness of, say, TDB’s title track: “You want them to notice the ragged ends of your summer dress/ You want them to see you like they see every other girl.” “True Trans Soul Rebel” confronts the high rates of suicide in the trans community. “Paralytic States” is about trying to reconcile the irreconcilable reflection in the mirror. Grace simultaneously specifies and universalizes; on “Drinking with the Jocks,” she recalls her pre-transition self laughing and using words like “bitches” and “faggots,” desperately trying to feel normal. Punk has never had a touchstone album quite like this. The whole this-record-saved-my-life thing is kind of overused, but for the teenagers who pick it up in a store or download it on a whim, it could be literally true.Whether they’re struggling daily against heteronormative culture or just the assholes in the lacrosse pinnies at the other end of the cafeteria, there are kids who need to hear this. (editorial@citypaper.net)

✚

Against Me!

Transgender Dysphoria Blues (TOTAL TREBLE)

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✚ ’Dance with the Devil

[ arts & entertainment ]

<<< continued from page 20

A one-of-a-kind feature shot over 4,027 days. of the first fully televised trial, a perfect storm of easily assigned tropes — the Black Widow, the Bad Teacher — that Zagar’s film argues made it impossible to see the truth clearly. Having gone to high school a few miles from where Smart’s trial took place, I wasn’t convinced that Smart got an unfair shake (at least not beyond a reasonable doubt), but Zagar finds a slew of fascinating characters, like a TV reporter who seems put off by the media spectacle without seeming to realize his role in it, and expertly collates archival footage to explore what feels like the archetype of the modern show trial. Sundance was short on must-sees this year, at least until the festival announced a few weeks in advance that Richard Linklater’s Boyhood had been added to the lineup. The one-of-a-kind feature was shot over 12 years — or, as Linklater put it at the premiere, 4,027 days — with Linklater checking in on a divorced couple (Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette) and their children (newcomer Ellar Cotrane and Linklater’s own daughter, Lorelei) at annual intervals. Given how much the quality of Linklater’s out-

put has varied over that timespan, it’s not surprising that the quality of Boyhood varies wildly; imagine the director of Before Midnight collaborating with the director of Fast Food Nation. But its best years are its last, in no small part because Coltrane grew during filming from a cute kid to a captivating young actor. Although Linklater initially shot clever transitions to mark the passage of time, he discarded them in favor of seamless time travel, embodying the “it goes so fast” element of parenting. The initial flood of wildly positive reactions seemed as much directed at Linklater’s undeniable achievement as the film itself, but it’s still a unique and sometimes overwhelming experience that may be better processed once the heat of the festival has died down. (s_adams@citypaper.net)

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By Mark Cofta

INTO THE WILD

ALEXANDER IZILIAEV

curtaincall

[ arts & entertainment ] Cherokee

➤ CHEROKEE IS A MESSY PLAY that strains credulity and defies

expectations — which doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile. Lisa D’Amour’s follow-up to her Obie Award-winning Detroit — also a Pulitzer Prize finalist — receives a lavish Wilma Theater premiere. In Detroit, suburbanites long for escape to the wilderness; in Cherokee, people who feel trapped in their dull lives actually attain what they consider the great outdoors: a North Carolina campsite, with a glitzy casino and an outdoor pageant celebrating the local natives nearby. While the setup promises a comedy about pampered Americans dumbfounded by the wild, smartphones in hand, struggling to put up their tents and turn on their new camping gadgets, director Anne Kauffman’s production slyly winks at us before the play even starts. Mimi Lien’s set is a photorealistic representation of a serene forest, but we can see the backdrop’s edges and supports, and threedimensional, obviously artificial trees are visually jarring in front of the pretty picture, which also contains a flowing stream. How could water visibly flow through a two-dimensional drop? Once we’re thinking that, we’re not looking at a stage representation of nature anymore, but a purposefully cynical interpretation. Lighting designer Drew Billiau underscores the point by several times flooding the stage with harsh fluorescent light that casts an artificial sheen.

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We receive those expected moments of the struggle with a new environment among former oil exec John (David Ingram), thirdgrade teacher Janine (Marcia Saunders), oil worker Mike (Kevin Jackson) and mall worker Traci (Ashley Everage). “This weekend, I’m going to hold a bug in my hand!” says Mike, with a combination of excitement and dread. Nature seems manageable with an allyou-can-eat casino buffet nearby. John, particularly, seeks “freedom from the number of social conventions we all follow” because life — unemployment, prostate cancer — has betrayed him. Suddenly the tone veers when Mike disappears: Is the mysterious wilderness turning on them? We’ve all seen enough crime procedurals on TV to expect something grim, but what happens — best not revealed here — unleashes magical realizations and philosophical musings. Some might feel it’s too much talk, but Cherokee is reminiscent of George Bernard Shaw’s fantastical plays, in which bizarre events lead to life-changing ideas and lots of passionate debate. Characters opine to the trees, bursting with thoughts like “I keep thinking about love as a free power that forces us to act.” It may not

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be realistic, or as comfortable as the play’s sitcom setup, but their epiphanies ring true. Josh (Kalani Queypo), a local Cherokee who waits casino tables and dropped out of junior college, joins the hapless suburbanites. He performs in the briefly heard, but unmistakably cheesy and Disney-fied outdoor spectacle “Through Mountains and Tears” (great music by Brendan Connelly), which tells of how the Cherokee were forced from their ancestral land by our government. We receive more background when Janine, reading from her smartphone, says, “Here’s some exposition.” Wink wink. Josh helps them connect with life in the forest, and with each other. But can they resist the familiar comforts of civilization, especially the Internet? Can living in tents on a campground be satisfying? Cherokee, like most good plays, doesn’t dish out pat answers. D’Amour challenges her characters, and us, to figure out what’s really important. (m_cofta@citypaper.net) ✚ Through Feb. 8, $35-$66, Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., 215-546-7824, wilmatheater.org.

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movie

shorts

FILMS ARE GRADED BY CITY PAPER CRITICS A-F.

Gimme Shelter

✚ NEW GIMME SHELTER Read Sam Adams’ review at citypaper.net/movies. (Wide release)

become as stifling as the un-air-conditioned Oklahoma setting, and Letts scripts the recriminations and confessions as a relentless succession of explosions — as monotonous as a two-hour fireworks display. —Shaun Brady (Ritz Five)

HER | B+ THE PAST | ASee Shaun Brady’s review on p. 21. (Ritz Five)

✚ CONTINUING AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY | C

New look, SAME SHARP EDGE.

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The first two films adapted from the work of playwright Tracy Letts, Bug and Killer Joe, were both nastily barbed plunges into contagious amorality, tautly directed by William Friedkin. As with those earlier films, Letts penned the screenplay for August: Osage County, but whether the blame falls on his adaptation, the original Pulitzer-winning play or John Wells’ slack direction, the third time loses the charm. The cast is packed with A-listers, but they’re engaged in a round-robin series of overwrought displays, paired off in endless variations — a virtual tournament of acting at one another. For sheer ferocity, Meryl Streep walks away with the trophy. She’s let off the leash as the pill-popping matriarch whose husband drowns himself at the outset, stitching together a Southern Gothic grotesque out of wild gesticulations and claws-bared put-downs. Julia Roberts fares better, at least when she’s not being drawn into shout-offs with Streep, while Chris Cooper and an underused Benedict Cumberbatch add heft to the subtler side of this emoting tug-of-war. But most of the performances

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Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) works for a company called BeautifulHandwrittenLetters.com, where he dictates mock-personal correspondence to a computer that then prints it out in a facsimile of human script. There are parents and children, husbands and wives, whose whole lives are built on his letters; he’s seen them through college and sleepaway camp, first dates and 50th anniversaries. But IRL contact is tougher for him — at least until Samantha, an artificially intelligent operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson), comes along. Her presents itself as a movie about technology, but writer-director Spike Jonze isn’t overly concerned with the sci- in his sci-fi romance. What interests Jonze is love, and how — or whether — it survives the way that relationships allow people to change, sometimes in incompatible directions. Johansson’s voice-only performance places Samantha as a girl-next-door type, developing unfamiliar emotional needs and then disguising them with jokes; you don’t need to see her eyes to picture her waiting for the right response. It’s a magnificently designed film, shot in smoggy pastels with the (human) characters in collarless retro-chic shirts. But it’s also more intellectualized than it could have been, as if Jonze is waiting for the audience to meet him halfway as well. —Sam Adams (Ritz East)

THE INVISIBLE WOMAN |ASurprises are the last thing you expect from a period piece

directed by Ralph Fiennes. But, as he did in transplanting Shakespeare’s Coriolanus to present-day Bosnia, Fiennes upends convention in relaying the story of Charles Dickens (Fiennes) and his longtime mistress, Nelly Ternan (Felicity Jones). Rather than Coriolanus’ shot across the bow, Fiennes’ second directorial outing begins in a relatively familiar, though well-executed, style, with a married, middle-aged Nelly reflecting on her relationship with the late author. Dickens is a full-fledged celebrity, one whose fame allows him to write and act in plays. Nelly hails from a theatrical family, and though she’s less eager to act than her siblings, Dickens declares that “she has something” — although that something, as it turns out, is not a talent for the stage. Even though he keeps his affair with Nelly secret, Dickens is coldly cruel to his wife (a magnificent, if toobriefly-seen Joanna Scanlan), boarding up the doorway between their separate rooms and eventually distancing himself from her through a letter to the editor. Once Dickens’ relationship with Nelly begins in earnest, The Invisible Woman shifts dramatically. As Dickens and Nelly retreat from public view, the other characters drop away, and the camera frames them in tight, gleaming close-ups that evoke J.M.W. Turner paintings. The Invisible Woman has other surprises in store, less in terms of plot than structure and style, and it firmly establishes that Fiennes is as great a director as he is an actor. —Sam Adams (Ritz at the Bourse)

JACK RYAN: SHADOW RECRUIT | D The Cold War is long over and Tom Clancy is dead, but Jack Ryan has

nonetheless been resurrected to battle glowering, vodka-swilling Russians intent on bringing America to its knees. In the character’s fourth incarnation, Chris Pine steps lightly in the footsteps of Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford and Ben Affleck. He’s believable enough as an out-of-his-element CIA agent in the now-requisite origin story, though he never makes much of an impression to argue for why Ryan is any more iconic than the next dozen breezy, blue-eyed action heroes. Kenneth Branagh both directs and plays the lead villain; as an actor he effects a Russian accent and as a director effects a Paul Greengrass one, aping the agitated camera moves and blunt force editing style of the Bourne series. The script (by Adam Cozad and David Koepp) is lazily plotted, positing a post-9/11 world where no one has ever seen a spy movie, employing tactics that audiences have seen a million times but which slip right by these espionage heavy-hitters. The story ends up relying less on its heroes’ quick reflexes than their ability to speed-type and execute blazingly fast Internet searches. When the plot does come unglued from all those screens, it’s merely to engage in another uninvolving car chase or to allow Branagh to announce his evil intentions in speeches that would have a Bond villain checking his watch. —Shaun Brady (Wide release)

RIDE ALONG | C Hirsute comic Jason Mantzoukas has no trouble stealing scenes as demented criminal Rafi on The League, but he’s out of his element as co-writer of a PG-13 comedy that’s more dad-

friendly than deranged. Starring ubiquitous Philly product Kevin Hart as a nerdy civilian eager to impress his prospective brother-in-law, a wildcard cop, Ride Along plays it so safe that its funniest gags come as a relief instead of a surprise. Obsessed with tracking down an elusive underworld kingpin named Omar, vice detective James (Ice Cube) wants nothing to do with his little sister’s spazzy, video-gameobsessed boyfriend, Ben (Hart). Challenging him to tag along on duty for a day, James organizes a series of inane situations to test Ben’s mettle — until Omar and his crew of real-life criminals show up. The open-ended construction of the plot could have allowed for any number of opportunities for Hart, who’s got broader appeal than most comedians working today. Instead, the movie’s little more than an unending string of straight man/silly man cracks about his slight height. We get it, he’s short. What else you got? —Drew Lazor (Wide release)

THE WOLF OF WALL STREET | AThree hours long without an ounce of fat, The Wolf of Wall Street is an utterly controlled monument to self-indulgence. As Jordan Belfort, a small-time broker who makes several fortunes selling penny stocks to increasingly well-monied chumps, Leonardo DiCaprio finally pays off the unrealized potential of his long collaboration with Martin Scorsese. Working from the real Belfort’s autobiography, screenwriter Terence Winter structures Wolf as a series of swindles and bacchanals which grow redundant and draining by design; Jordan’s the life of the party, but he’s also the one waking up in a

puddle of fluid the morning after. He’s surrounded by men, including Jonah Hill as a composite second-in-command, who’ll do anything for him as long as the money keeps coming — and it does. Wolf runs the risk of making financial corruption seem attractive, but that’s because it is — at least to those of sufficient amorality, willing to pay the fines and do their brief terms. It won’t turn people off financial crime any more than any cautionary tale can stop people from trying drugs, but it’s a frightening and clear-eyed look at why so many indulge, and why they get to keep on indulging. —Sam Adams (Roxy Theater, UA Riverview)

[ movie shorts ]

Adventures in wife swapping. Sat., Jan. 25, 9 p.m., $9.

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE

✚ REPERTORY FILM

3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, ihousephilly.org. Newlyweeds (2013, U.S., 87 min.): Reelblack presents this marijuana-infused romance. Writer/director Shaka King appears via Skype post screening. Tue., Jan. 28, 7 p.m., $10. Claes Oldenburg at 85: Two films portraying the American sculptor who gave us Clothespin. Oldenburg expert Branden W. Joseph introduces the screening with a special presentation. Wed., Jan. 29, 7 p.m., free with RSVP.

FREE TO LOVE: CINEMA OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION

PHILAMOCA

International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, ihousephilly.org. The Set (1970, Australia, 102 min.): A rare screening of one of Australia’s first homoerotic feature films. Thu., Jan. 23, 7 p.m., $9. Score (1972, U.S./ Yugoslavia, 95 min.): A swinging couple gets it on with a number of friends and acquaintances. Discussion with historian Elena Gorfinkel and director Radley Metzger post screening. Fri., Jan. 24, 7 p.m., $9. Hot Times (a.k.a. My Erotic Fantasies) (1974, U.S., 80 min.): To avoid an X rating, significant bits of dialogue were replaced with cartoonish sounds. Sat., Jan. 25, 5 p.m., $9. I, A Man (1967, U.S., 97 min.): The Andy Warhol sexploitation film that almost starred Jim Morrison. Sat., Jan. 25, 7 p.m., $9. Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969, U.S., 105 min.):

531 N. 12th St., 267-519-9651, philamoca.org. Ghost Story of the Snow Witch (1968, Japan, 79 min.): Yukionna, a female spirit with the power to freeze her enemies, takes human form. Wed., Jan. 29, 7:30 p.m., free.

More on:

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—Shaun Brady ✚ FOR COMPREHENSIVE

Wed., Jan. 29, 8 p.m., free, The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., arsnovaworkshop.com.

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ADOP

CECILLE! 11 YEARS OLD

I’m Cecille, a beautiful 11-year-old lady who’s looking for a home. I’ve been shufﬂed through several homes through no fault of my own, and I long for the stability of a permanent family. I’m a laid-back cat who just wants a nice place to live and a person to love. Will you welcome me into your family?

Located on the corner of 2nd and Arch. All PAWS animals are spayed/neutered, vaccinated, and microchipped before adoption. For more information, call 215-238-9901 ext. 30 or email adoptions@phillypaws.org

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J A N U A R Y 2 3 - J A N U A R Y 2 9 , 2 0 1 4 | C I T Y PA P E R . N E T

f&d

foodanddrink

feedingfrenzy HUGHE DILLION

By Caroline Russock

➤ NOW SEATING

Simply Shabu | Simply Shabu is bringing shabu shabu — i.e. Chinese fondue — to Philly with this newly opened Chinatown 40-seater. The cold-weather-perfect interactive dining concept is fairly straightforward — choose your combo (beef, chicken, pork, seafood, veg or surf & turf), select your broth (house, vegetable or spicy), add a la carte items (fish balls, enoki mushrooms, slices of ribeye, tofu) and get to tabletop cooking. Mon.-Thu., 5-10 p.m.; Fri., 5-11 p.m.; Sat., 11 a.m.-3 p.m., 5-11 p.m.; Sun., 11-3 p.m., 5-10 p.m.; 1023 Cherry St., 267-273-0354, simplyshabu.com. Crabby Cafe and Sports Bar | The latest addition to the Piazza at Schmidt’s is an unlikely combo of Vietnamese and Cajun fare. Crabby Cafe & Sports Bar has taken over the space that was formerly Max’s Brew Bar. The Crabby’s folks have retained the 32-tap draft system and rolled out a menu of seafood boils in flavors like Cajun (regular, spicy or burning), garlic butter and lemon Cajun. Orders of crab, crawfish, clams or oysters come with corn, potatoes and links of sausage. Also on the menu are bowls of pho and fried seafood apps. Mon., Wed., 4 p.m.-10 p.m.; Thu.-Fri., 4 p.m.-2 a.m.; Sat., noon-2 a.m.; Sun., noon-midnight; 1050 N. Hancock St., Unit 1, 215-574-9700, crabbycafebar.com. ➤ LOOKING AHEAD

Bart Blatstein’s new casino, The Provence, proposed for the corner of Broad and Callowhill, pending state Gaming Commission approval, of course, will have eight restaurants total. Blatstein is planning to bring in two big names: Tom Colicchio of Top Chef fame and Andrew Carmellini of Locanda Verde, The Dutch and Lafayette in New York. Got A Tip? Please send restaurant news to restaurants@ citypaper.net or call 215-735-8444, ext. 207.

GOLD STANDARD: Kevin Sbraga’s Carolina Gold studded with Sea Island red peas and braised oxtail at The Fat Ham. JESSICA KOURKOUNIS

[ review ]

SOUTHERN EXPOSURE Kevin Sbraga’s sophomore effort, The Fat Ham, brings a shot of Southern comfort to University City. By Adam Erace THE FAT HAM | 3131 Walnut St., 215-735-1914, sbragadining.com/

fatham. Mon.-Thu., 5 p.m.-10 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5 p.m.-11 p.m.; $5-$16.

vintage postcard sits above the toilet in the restroom at Kevin Sbraga’s new Southern restaurant on the fringe of University City, the Fat Ham. ASHEVILLE, it says in time-crackled block letters. There’s a note scrawled on the other side, detailing the sender’s More on: affection for the fresh mountain air — and dismay at a traveling companion’s dental troubles — in proper English prose that reeks of Rockefellers and crumpets. The note concludes in typical postcard fashion, “Wish you were here.” I sure did. Asheville, Nashville. Charleston or Memphis. Greensboro, Greenville and everywhere in betweens-ville. The cities of the South have this possessive magic — the people, the food. Visit and be dared not to fall in love. Sbraga is trying to conjure that Southern magic here, on a concrete isthmus bridging Center

citypaper.net

and University cities that’s about as hospitable as the Gaza Strip. It’s a tough order, and not just because of the location. Southern food is fiercely proprietary, and Sbraga’s ties to the cuisine seem tenuous when he says, “I cooked down South for four years,” and most of that time was in Naples, Fla. (The other time was in Atlanta, legit.) His grandmother is from Birmingham, he visits the region frequently — but he’s still a Yankee, and to Southerners, a Yankee cooking hot chicken and potlikker would be met with the same suspicion as a Southerner cooking cheesesteaks. Sitting at the bar, sipping from the masterful brown-liquor library amassed by GM Ben Fileccia, I wondered whether the decision to open the Fat Ham was motivated more by emotion or business. The name, with its pandering to tired, bacon-everything clichés, seems to suggest the latter. And if that’s the case, that’s OK. But I would say, embrace the trend-chasing instead of maskMORE FOOD AND ing it behind suspect connections. DRINK COVERAGE “It’s flattering that non-Southerners AT C I T Y P A P E R . N E T / want to cook Southern food,” says Southern M E A LT I C K E T. Living deputy editor Jennifer Cole, who hosted Sbraga & Co. at her Birmingham home for “Bourbon on the Porch” (an industry tradition in the South) during their tour of the region. “But that food has to be really good.” And mostly, it is. When dishes started arriving, clean execution and confident flavors quickly trumped geographic culinary authority. The sweetest lobster tail got country-fried (and countrified) in >>> continued on page 34

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[ food & drink ]

✚ Southern Exposure <<< continued from page 33

The sweetest lobster tail got country-fried (and countrified). a buttermilk batter that cooked up crunchy and thick. The panko casing on wheels of juicy green tomato was different — light, crisp and laced with Locatelli Romano. Boiled peanuts replaced tahini in a smart hummus that was delicious (albeit fridge-direct frosty) and paired with superior house-baked rye-and-wheat bread. The mustard greens starter is the antidote to kale salad ennui: eye-catching emerald leaves cut into frilly ribbons that were full of spice and texture; a fistful of peanuts, sesame seeds and chopped scallions; a warm mustard vinaigrette whose temperature brings a cozy, comforting quality to the dish without wilting the greens. Its presence on the menu is so unassuming you might miss it. Do not. Sbraga pays proper respect to grain godfather Anson Mills, which he visited in Columbia, S.C., during his Southern field trip. The mill supplies its distinguished Carolina Gold rice, the heirloom parent of modern longgrain, and the silky grits that Sbraga cooks up with smokedpork and shrimp stocks, butter and cream. The former meets straps of succulent braised oxtail, soffrito and tender Sea Island red peas (also Anson Mills); the latter, sweet shrimp seared on the plancha and a fun, salty “ham condiment” of diced ham, scallions, peanuts and garlic. In the mac’n’cheese, the hollows of the durum-wheat pasta shells — made at Sbraga and delivered to Ham — were like cups collecting from a well of fluid cheddar, smoked Gouda and béchamel with house-made barbecue chips and panko scattered over top for texture. Hot chicken, the Nashville specialty, brought a leg and thigh buttermilk-marinated, dredged in seasoned flour, deep-fried and tossed with salt, lard and cayenne pepper. The portion was puny, and the house-baked white bread it’s perched upon was as tough as a flank steak sliced the wrong way, but the bird shone with juiciness beneath the thick, crusty nut-brown exterior. Now if only he can find a way to make the fiery jacket stay on the chicken. Desserts are by Marqessa Gesualdi, a pastry star in the making if her lemon bar — a dream of luminous jelled lemon curd, buttery shortbread, poppy-seed-speckled crème fraîche and torched meringue — was any indication. It was the thing the bartender passed across the crowded counter before my check, which was as startlingly reasonable as the service was excellent. The most expensive thing on the menu is only $16. If it hadn’t been so cold, I might have ordered another few fingers of limited-edition Dad’s Hat port-barrelfinished rye and repaired to a rocking chair on the cozy front “porch” that welcomes you off the street — a nod to Jennifer Cole’s house. Only here the view is of whizzing traffic and sunken rail yards instead of stately oaks. If the bourbon tastes extra smoky, blame Amtrak. (adam.erace@citypaper.net) 34 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |

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[ comic ]

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[ i love you, i hate you ] To place your FREE ad (100 word limit) ➤ email lovehate@citypaper.net ANGORA BUNNY You adorable angora bunny, I love you so fucking much! I want to build you the finest holt out of sticks, mud and kelp, fish for you, forage shellfish and crack them open for you on my belly. This otter is head-over-heels! It’s incredible that you were my upstairs neighbor and now you’re my mate. Your eyes are beacons of blue-green bliss and your butt is like a sexy number three laying on its back. I can’t believe you really exist. BTW: The sandwiches you send with me to work are delectable squares from heaven!

you that these thoughts are not based in malice or contempt, but in the love I feel for you and the potential I see in you? We shouldn’t be unhappy together. Let’s try to be happier apart...

I KNOW I’m beating a dead horse...but...M, the pattern of break ups and make ups has hurt me so... Why can’t you just make it easy and give me the unconditional love I give you? I always wanted you to be there for me, but when I needed you most,

dinner table with the 2 of you liars? Does Hutch know you were a junkie? Does he know you have Hep-C? Do the kids understand mommy is a lying, cheating FUCK? I suppose not.....Can’t wait until they know the truth and ask to leave. I hope you rot in the deepest layer of Hell. I hope you get used, cheated on and left on the curb, like you did to me you cunt. I hope he slides under a gas truck and fucking dies a horrible slow death, while you watch. Then I hope you live forever with your kids hating you. I HATE YOU!!

ANNA Just thought you should know that I know about you and Xavier right after you moved into your current apt and I had just told you I loved you. I know how you don’t feel bad about it. You can’t deny what you’ve written. your own words point the finger right back at yourself. and I have my strong suspicions about you that Tuesday night last spring when I showed up after work, and it took you too long to answer the door, and your face and ears were all red, and then he emerged from the direction of your bedroom a few minutes later. I gave you the benefit of the doubt all the time. but you’ve lied to me, and made me the fool. I’m the fool for believing your lies. the offer to come find me when you’re ready is null and void. get your shit together and stop being a fucking icy bitch to everyone you know. that’s all I got.

me! Why are we wasting time? I am tired on all the nonsense that goes on between us! How dare you not answer me about what you and I should be doing together! I love you and you love me. Remember when you made love to me, I looked at you and turned around and thought to myself, this guy is really fucking my brains out! I want this every day! In every way! I love you Double G!

PILL HEAD BITCH-DIRTY KIDS Bitch u aint nothin but a pill head ugly mustache bitch who get high and sleep ya life away. U need to b taking care of them fucked up looking kids and paying people the money u owe. U a pathetic excuse for a woman. I take care of mine and im not home sitting on my ass all day. My daughter in school and so am i. Instead of hating on me so much bitch you should observe and take notes. Every week bitch ima b on here calling yo ass out til i see u and fuck u up.

STANKY DOG THEIF BITCHES You fuckin’ bitches! How dare you rip off my loving wife!?!this is why I don’t trust anyone, it’s fuckin’ scum bags like you that give good people a bad rep, and on top of that people the bitch had the nerve to wear a “corrections” jacket,these fuckin’ bitches had the nerve to rip off my girl who has had to battle breast cancer and just had a fuckin’ stroke. You low life piece of shit you. KARMA BITCH! GO FUCK YOUSELF,YOU WILL GET WHAT YOU DESERVE! Have a nice day!

DUM-DUM’S WHAT KIND OF GRANDMA ARE YOU?

I love south philly but there are a few things I despise; all the old people I constantly see stuffing trash bags and garbage down the storm drains in the street. What the fuck is wrong with you? Where do you think that shits going? Yelling at you is a lot of fun but you old dudes need to check yourself. You are not in The Sopranos and the next time you pull that phony mafia bullshit, I’m gonna smack the aqua velva right off your face!

U doing karaoke evey weekend but u cant even manage to buy my daughter a gift for Christmas or her birthday. Let alone acknowledge her as a part of your family. As a black woman i thought you would respect the fact that i take care of mine and b of some type of assistance. U stay crying broke but u party every weekend. Ass backwards. I jus thought i let the universe know how much i despise you as a woman and a grandmother. I hate u bitch.

FACE SLAPPER WANKER Dear Wanker that slapped me in the face while I was riding my bike on Baltimore Ave: What the hell dude- I was just riding along quietly in the bike lane and you slapped me in the face really hard and I almost ate shit on the trolly tracks you dickshit. You weren’t even hailing a cab. You just suck at life. Don’t slap people in the face, especially when they’re on a bike which makes your little slap hurt way more because of momentum and physics or whatever. Nobody wants to ice their face on a Wednesday night..or ever for that matter. You’re a wanker.

I DON’T HATE YOU How do I tell you that I FEEL like our time has passed? How do I say that I think we both will be happier if we go our separate ways? How can I show you that I’m running on empty and don’t feel like I have any more to give? How do show

YOU GROSS ME OUT

with V, you just let me fall...and cry alone.. Why did you make things difficult? why couldn’t you have just slid that ring on my finger + been everything I deserved like you said you would be?

I REALLY HATE YOU How much is a man supposed to take? First, after 14 years of marriage you cheat on me with him, now you’re moving our kids in w/him! Jesus Christ! Un-Fucking-Believable! MY SON has to spend his days and nights growing up with that asshole, home-wrecker, deer-killing jerk off son of a big fat bitch?! My daughter has to sit around a

SIT DOWN BITCH Bitch you was never no friend. Stop comparing yourself to me. We nothin alike i am not a dike, i don’t dress like im in 10th grade about to break out in Wu-Tanging wit a bookbag on. I don’t rock kinky twist and batik hair. My daughter physically lives with me and most importantly im not a whore out here on these streets. Catch me and traffic bitch.

What is the deal with you standing all fucking close to me like you don’t have any brains or something! If I really wanted you to stand next to me I would of asked you to stand closer, closer, but you could tell that I didn’t want to be bothered with you...you body was too sweaty and that wasn’t sexy or anything! Even if you thought it was sexy it wasn’t! I can’t believe you supposed to be a woman and you’re not even on the tip of being clean with yourself. I don’t like the fact that you even ride with me everyday! Your fucking gross!

✚ ADS ALSO APPEAR AT CITYPAPER.NET/lovehate. City Paper has the

LET’S RIDE

right to re-publish “I Love You, I Hate You”™ ads at the publisher’s discre-

Let’s ride out and be together, I mean I really want to be with you and I know that you want to be with

tion. This includes re-purposing the ads for online publication, or for any other ancillary publishing projects.

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