Philadelphia City Paper, August 6th, 2015

P H I L A D E L P H I A

AUGUST 6 - AUGUST 12, 2015 ISSUE #1575

5 BIG PROJECTS

BY JON HURDLE

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IN THIS ISSUE … p. 6

MUM’S THE WORD The Berlin Wall

OK, SO NOBODY’S suggesting that another Berlin Wall is going to be built around Center City as a security precaution when Pope Francis visits at the end of September. But the lack of information by the feds in charge about what is going to happen has a bunch of people on edge. Tops among them are pregnant women who are due to deliver when the pontiff is in town. Staff writer Emily Guendelsberger reports on the stress the uncertainty is causing.

CP STAFF Associate Publisher Jennifer Clark Editor in Chief Lillian Swanson Senior Editor Patrick Rapa Arts & Culture Editor Mikala Jamison Food Editor Jenn Ladd Senior Staff Writer Emily Guendelsberger Staff Writer Jerry Iannelli Copy Chief Carolyn Wyman Contributors Sam Adams, Dotun Akintoye, A.D. Amorosi, Rodney Anonymous, Mary Armstrong, Bryan Bierman, Shaun Brady, Peter Burwasser, Mark Cofta, Adam Erace, David Anthony Fox, Caitlin Goodman, K. Ross Hoffman, Jon Hurdle, Deni Kasrel, Alli Katz, Gary M. Kramer, Josh Kruger, Drew Lazor, Alex Marcus, Gair “Dev 79” Marking, Robert McCormick, Andrew Milner, John Morrison, Michael Pelusi, Natalie Pompilio, Sameer Rao, Jim Saksa, Elliott Sharp, Marc Snitzer, Nikki Volpicelli, Brian Wilensky, Andrew Zaleski, Julie Zeglen.

Production Director Dennis Crowley Senior Designer/Social Media Director Jenni Betz Contributing Photographers Jessica Kourkounis, Charles Mostoller, Hillary Petrozziello, Maria S. Young, Neal Santos, Mark Stehle U.S. Circulation Director Joseph Lauletta (ext. 239) Account Managers Sharon MacWilliams (ext. 262), Russell Marsh (ext. 260), Susanna Simon (ext. 250) Classified Account Manager Jennifer Fisher (215-717-2681) Editor Emeritus Bruce Schimmel founded City Paper in a Germantown storefront in November 1981. Local philanthropist Milton L. Rock purchased the paper in 1996 and published it until August 2014 when Metro US became the paper’s third owner.

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BEST BIG WEEKLY IN PA 2015 KEYSTONE PRESS AWARDS

COVER PHOTOGRAPH // Mark Stehle COVER DESIGN // Jenni Betz

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THE BELL CURVE

THIS WEEK ’S TOTAL: 0 // THE YEAR SO FAR: -14

OUR WEEKLY QUALITY-OF-LIFE-O-METER

-1

+1

Comcast announces a new program to help senior citizens “cross the digital divide.” “Why do I have to sign a waiver saying it’s OK to ‘digitize my soul for on-demand harvesting?’” asks an 83-year-old lady in Port Richmond. “No reason,” says her television.

+1

A manatee is spotted in the Delaware River, north of Philadelphia. “Know what? Fuck you,” says Chris Christie.

-1

Bike couriers say the pope’s visit will cost them thousands in lost revenue. “To save money, we may have to forgo showering and doing laundry,” says veteran courier Psyk Ric. “And shaving and obeying traffic signals and being nice to pedestrians.”

+2

An eight-story mural celebrating Phillies history is unveiled along the Schuylkill. It’s kinda minimalist — just two little bright spots in a sea of gray.

Firefighters respond to a brush fire in Kensington. “Looks like I’m out of a job,” says Ranger Bill, head of the Kensington National Park Service.

+1

Presidential hopeful Scott Walker is dogged by “protesters” in Philly holding signs reading “Scott Walker Sniffs His Own Poop” and “Scott Walker Lives Inside My Butt.” “So embarrassing,” says Walker.

“It made me want to grab a stick of my poop, crawl back into that guy’s butt, and just hide from the world, you know?”

3

-

A Canadian-builthitchhiking “robot” called hitchBOT is found beaten and torn apart in Philadelphia, after traveling 6,000 miles throughout Europe and North America. But before its sparkling eyes could go dark for the very last time, the robot looked up at the face of its attacker and understood that whatever waves of shame would pass over this city in the hours and days to follow, it would eventually be replaced by some sick strain of civic pride.

“Hurry, pope,” said hitchBOT. And then he was no more.

MR. MFN EXQUIRE

MAD DECENT BLOCK PARTY

Hold on to your crop tops, it’s going to be a wild ride when Diplo brings his Mad Decent crew to Philly for two consecutive days of vic ious EDMania. The fifth and sixth stops on his 22-night tour have Wesley Pentz playing his hometown as half of Jack Ü (alongside his friend and col lab orator Skrillex) and one third of the boombahton dance group Major Lazer. Alison Wonderland, Yellow Claw and Flosstradamus will also be there, turning the dials and reading the crowd. 8/6-7, Fes tival Pier at Penn’s Landing, r5productions. com. —Nikki Volpicelli

Jack Ü

MICHAEL BUCHER

more picks on p. 18

T.J. MILLER

WILLY T

QUICK PICKS

WALLA FEST

Half hard-as-hollow-points street rapper, half goofy gadabout, Mr. Muthafuckin’ eXquire is a tough guy to get a handle on. One minute he’s making Game of Thrones references and fart jokes, and the next he’s in full-on fuck-society mode.

But “unpredictable” isn’t the worst thing in the world.The beats and rhymes are there; maybe that’s all a muthafucker needs. 8/7, Kung Fu Necktie, kungfunecktie. com. —Patrick Rapa

Though his pro file has risen considerably with the success of Silicon Valley, T.J. Miller has been a de pen da bly hil ar i ous actor and stand up for years. The unkempt comic’s live set is the perfect showcase for his spacey, ram bling de mean or, which he sells equal ly hard on high- and lowminded bits alike. Yes, he makes even the smart jokes sound dumb. 8/1112, The Trocadero, the troc.com. —Alex Marcus

Don’t know why it’s called that, don’t care. This sweet little festival, former ly based in Nor ristown, now sets up shop at PhilaMOCA for two full days (4 p.m.-midnight) of music (Mannequin Pussy, Norwegian Arms and 14 other bands), art exhibitions and movie screenings. 8/8-9, PhilaMOCA, philamoca.org, wallafest. com. —Patrick Rapa

Mannequin Pussy

JAKE MEGINSKY

Whether playing percussion instruments or generating sounds electronically, Jake Meginsky wrings an enormity of sound from scant resources. The line between acoustic and electronic is beyond blurred in his work. With eyes closed, a howling screech could be a burst of feedback or a cymbal scraped across an amplified snare; a subtle soundscape could be the tapping of a table or the interruption of a circuit.

8/9, Aux Per for mance Space at Vox Populi Gallery, museumfire.com/events.

—Shaun Brady

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THENAKEDCITY

NEWS // OPINION // POLI T ICS

BACKUP PLAN: Julie Berson, 31, will change her plans and walk to Pennsylvania Hospital if she goes into labor during the pope’s visit. Pictured here with her are husband Benjamin Trayes and stepdaughter Charlotte Trayes.

GINA MARIE PHOTOGRAPH Y

POPE-ADELPHIA

BY EMILY GUENDELSBERGER

GET ME TO THE HOSPITAL ON TIME

Pregnant women say the lack of information about how they will get to hospitals during the pope’s visit is stressing them out.

“I WAS EXCITED when I first found out the pope was coming; I was not pregnant at the time, so I was like,‘This is really cool!’” says Cori Brown, 29, a nurse at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania (HUP). “I was raised Catholic, and I think the pope is a good guy, and I think it’s great for the city.”

Brown lives in Drexel Hill, and is due to give birth to a baby girl at Pennsylvania Hospital, at Eighth and Spruce, in late September. She didn’t even make the timing connection at first. “You just get your due date and you’re so excited! I don’t think it was until I was about 20 weeks pregnant — about 11 weeks ago — that someone asked my due date, and I said the 28th of September, and they said, ‘Oh! The pope’s here that weekend!’ And it finally hit me, like — ‘Oh, crap. That’s going to make things interesting.’”

Most information floating around

so far about security measures around the pope’s visit has been either confusing (SEPTA’s odd rail-pass lottery fiasco) or based on unconfirmed leaks from anonymous sources — rumors of a giant fence, closures of Ben Franklin Bridge and I-95, and a couple of maps purporting to show security perimeters and limits on vehicle access.

The biggest source of freakouts thus farisprobablyamappurportingtoshow in red and yellow where checkpoints, boundaries and no-drive zones would be.The Monday after the map surfaced unsourced on Reddit, an exasperatedsounding Mayor Michael Nutter held a press conference to explain that the maps weren’t real, and to ask the city to stop freaking the hell out. “I want to be very, very clear with all of you. No official security perimeter has been announced or fully and finally determined. …

When there’s official information to be

released, we’ll release it officially,” he said.

“I’m not planning to give every nutcase in the universe a significant amount of advance information.”

Nutter also mentioned he’d heard from two women who were due to give birth on the day of the pope’s arrival. The mayor assured them and all pregnant women due during Pontiffmania that “they will get to the hospital that day.”

There were 23,247 births in Philly last year; if the rates are about the same this year, about 500 women’s due dates will fall during the weeklongWorld Meeting of Families. And Nutter’s statement wasn’t particularly reassuring to the several of them we were able to track down.They’ve heard nothing but vague reassurances for their first two trimesters, and the complete lack of concrete information about what will happen if they go into labor at the height of the Pope Francis craziness is starting to put them on edge. The pontiff is expected to visit several sites in Philly on Sept. 26 and celebrate Mass on the Parkway on Sept. 27.

“I work at a Catholic institution, so at first I was thinking about it on the work side, not really on the baby side. Now that it’s gotten closer to my due date, I’m feeling a little bit of pressure,” says Katie LeGrand, who works for Villanova University. She’s due to give birth on Sept.

25 at Lankenau Hospital, which is about 20 minutes from her home. The hospital is also right across the street from St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, where the pontiff will stay during his visit.

LeGrand says she isn’t generally the worrying type, but not being able to get solid information out of anyone is beginning to stress her out. “I’ve asked when I’ve gone in for checkups, and [Lankenau is] not really telling us anything — because they haven’t really been told anything — about security or traffic,” she says. “Is it going to be a three-hour drive as opposed to a 20-minute drive?

Are we not going to be able to get there at all? I have no idea.”

The message from Lankenau so far has been, “‘We’re a hospital, we have to stay open,’” says LeGrand, “but my one OBGYN was like, ‘Well, there’s not going to be a back door you can sneak in because you’re in labor,’ so it’s kind of been left up

in the air.”

LeGrand says her doula suggested switching to another hospital, which LeGrand is now looking into. “I would probably have to transfer my records to a new practice and start over with somebody else?” She laughs ruefully. “I don’t know!” Word from the doula is that Lankenau will be the only hospital in the suburbs affected, at least, so she has her pick of a couple of others that are nearby and covered by her insurance. “Clearly the hospitals in the city proper are all affected,” says LeGrand. “I’m happy that I didn’t decide to try to deliver at [HUP], because it would be completely impossible for me to get there.”

Julie Berson, due date Sept. 30, had plan ned to del iver at that hos pital, located at 34th and Spruce. She lives in Center City, but a friend had highly recommended a practice that delivers at HUP. Berson, 31, likes the practice as much as her friend, but at her last visit came up with a backup plan: If she goes into labor while the city is in pope mode, she instead will walk to the closer Pennsylvania Hospital. “I need to make sure that my insurance won’t have a prob-

‘Is it going to be a three-hour drive as opposed to a 20-minute drive? Are we not going to be able to get there at all? I have no idea.’ lem with that — and none of the doctors I’ve gotten to know over the last seven months will be delivering my baby, which is a little annoying,” she says.

Berson has also been frustrated by the lack of information. “[HUP] wrote us a letter saying, ‘We know the pope’s coming, we’re going to make a plan, don’t worry!’ But it didn’t say anything!” Other than that, she says, she’s heard “absolutely nothing — that’s all they told us.”

Later, when she mentioned this at prenatal class, “Other women in the room were telling me that they were told that they were just going to be required to walk to” wherever they were going to deliver.

Berson, a lawyer, did a bit of investigation to try to get hold of something more solid than rumors. One woman in her class, she says, “is due, like, three days before the pope gets here, and is involved in planning for the pope’s arrival; she’s in on all the meetings.” The woman told Berson

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GET ME TO THE HOSPITAL ON TIME

“that the Secret Service is being really, really secretive about the plans,” and that’s why none of the hospitals have been able to say anything concrete.

The pope’s visit has been designated a National Special Security Event, which means that Homeland Security and the Secret Service are in charge of Philly’s security plans. And the feds appear to share Nutter’s disinclination to share security details with “every nutcase in the universe” — or anyone at all, early on. The Secret Service told website PlanPhilly in late June that the media shouldn’t hold its breath on hearing about security plans, road closures, security checkpoints or other specific details until at least three weeks before the pope arrives.

Brown, the nurse, says at least she’s not worried about having to walk from Drexel Hill to Eighth and Spruce between contractions — she did get a rare piece of concrete information at her last birth class at Pennsylvania Hospital. “They didn’t give out a whole lot of specifics, but they did let us know that there will be a way to drive to the hospital if you are in labor,” she says; the hospital is in the process of figuring out the route.

But coordinating an acceptable route sounds a bit like a game of Telephone. Brown says she and her classmates were told that “security was being coordinated by Homeland Security and the Secret Service, so they have to wait for them — the federal government — before they can pass decisions on to the Philadelphia Police and then to the hospitals and the patients. So, once [the feds] decide what’s going on, the hospital will be able to let the patients know an exact route. But they reassured us multiple times — we will be able to get there.”

Given what she’s managed to find out, Berson believes, “It’s not really on the hospitals that they haven’t come up with a plan.You can’t plan around something if you don’t know what it is.”

Actually, you can, says Priscilla Koutsouradis, spokeswoman for the Philly-area branch of the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania, a hospital, long-term-care center and rehab facility membership organization. Hospitals do it all the time.

“When people ask me [how we’re preparing], I always like them to understand that we are always preparing for something big, because that’s part of our mission. We have to be ready. It’s baked into what we do. Planning for something big like this is very new to some organizations; but for us, it’s part of our normal ongoing emergency preparedness.”

Koutsouradis lists examples of how the region’s hospitals have come through in trying situations with the assured-but-slightly-weary air of someone being asked by a 40th neurotic relative whether she’s really, really sure that she won’t be murdered if she walks the three blocks home alone. “Hurricane Sandy — all the hospitals kept operating. Big snowstorms — we know how to get our staff in and sleep staff over so that we have continuous operation.” The Amtrak derailment, too.

The pope’s visit, while obviously different, is not in another realm of different, she says.“It’s like planning for the biggest snowstorm ever.” Area hospitals have been making plans for the papal visit for months, she says. “For example, we just finished a tabletop exercise which, guess what, was a mass gathering on the Parkway where some bad things

happened.”

Kout sour adis says she understands that the lack of communication must be frustrating when you’re in your third trimester, but promises that “we are totally working with our government partners to get ready for this.’”

Like Berson, Brown has gotten vague messages from her hospital, but she has found them largely reassuring.

“They’ve sent emails, one two weeks ago and another this week, just saying, ‘Hey, we know your anxieties are high, but we are coming up with a plan and we will keep you updated.’ It’s not disclosing a whole lot of specifics, but it’s nice to get updates saying, ‘We don’t have anything for you yet, but we are working on it.’ And I trust them. I work for Penn, I love Penn, I have nothing but amazing things to say about Penn; I know they’re not going to leave people stranded.

“I might not find out the route or exactly how it’s going to happen until two weeks before or, hell, even a week before, but I know that they will get it done,” Brown says.“It’s not going to be as easy as it would be if I delivered early, but we won’t be totally stuck.” (emilyg@citypaper.net, @emilygee)

The feds appear to share Mayor Nutter’s disinclination to share security details with ‘every nutcase in the universe’ — or anyone at all, early on.

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IT’LL BE BIG: When finished in 2018, Comcast’s new Innovation and Technology Center will be the tallest skyscraper in Philadelphia.

By Jon Hurdle | Photographs By Mark Stehle

5 BIG PROJECTS

The demand for a ‘live-work-play’ lifestyle is driving five big projects that are changing the face of Philly.

A

t the corner of 12th and Market streets, a brutalist block that long held downscale retail shops has been torn down, and in its place hard hats, dump trucks and backhoes are bustling about as they build a new retail, residential and office complex called East Market.

Half a dozen blocks to the west, another swarm of construction workers is hard at work on the 13-story concrete core of Comcast’s massive new tower, the Innovation and Technology Center. When completed in 2018, the skyscraper will be the tallest in the city and home to 2,800 new office jobs.

At 36th and Filbert in West Philly, piles of rubble make up the remains of the former University City High School, which is being demolished to make way for a $1 billion expansion of the University City Science Center. The center is a magnet for companies seeking to commercialize the innovations emerging from nearby Penn and Drexel laboratories.

Four miles south of City Hall, the Navy Yard is adding thousands of square feet of office and laboratory

space on its 1,200-acre riverside campus and has just completed a 4.5-acre park, designed to burnish its “live-work-play” credentials for about 12,000 people who work at the farthest tip of South Broad Street.

And at a former metalworking factory in Fishtown, concert giant Live Nation is creating the city’s newest rock venue, a short walk from SugarHouse Casino and Yards Brewery.

Philly’s construction boom is picking up steam across the city, as the demand for a “live-work-play” lifestyle among city-loving millennials has pushed development of more shops, apartments, offices and entertainment spaces. Along with the muchpublicized millennials is a sizable contingent of baby boomers who are exchanging their suburban palaces for proximity to the city’s art galleries, restaurants

and concert halls.

“What’s going on in Philadelphia right now is a confluence of factors,” said Mitch Marcus, managing director in the Philadelphia office of Jones Lang LaSalle, a global commercial real estate and investment management firm. “You have an influx of millennials and empty nesters coming back to the city.

“That spurred some of the redevelopment of our residential base, which is also feeding our retail base, and then slowly but surely, those young people who are staying around now,” he said.

Since 2000, the city’s population in the section from Girard Avenue in the north to Tasker Street in the south, and river to river, has grown by 16 percent to 183,000 residents. Of that number, about 40 percent are millennials, aged 20 to 34. Another 23 percent are over 55, according to Center City District’s 2015 annual report.

The growing demand for city living is being fueled by the improvement of public spaces such as Dilworth Park and the Schuylkill River Trail extension that help to create a more livable city, Marcus said.

“It’s very affordable. It’s really taken advantage of its outdoor spaces in creating a very walkable, cyclable, livable city, and I think that’s driving a lot of the development,” he said.

One indication of demand for the new development is the low vacancy rate for high-end apartments in Center City, Marcus said. At below 3 percent, the rate is putting pressure on developers to build more.

“We’re getting to the point where there is not enough inventory to keep up,” he said. “We’re leasing up so fast, we’ve never really had this before.”

While Center City apartments are still more affordable than their equivalents in New York and Washington, D.C., the new space isn’t cheap. A onebedroom, 700-square-foot apartment in one of the new buildings is likely to rent for about $2,200 a month, he said.

Equally worrisome, as some parts of the city prosper, lower-income residents are being displaced.

Poorer neighborhoods, which aren’t attracting development dollars, are only becoming more rundown, and the cycle of inequality is perpetuated. Activists are calling for more affordable housing to be built with the new residental development.

T

he biggest of the new projects is the $1.2 billion Comcast tower that is rising along Arch Street between 18th and 19th streets. When finished, it will be 1,121 feet high, making it the eighth tallest building in the United States. By late July, its structural core had risen 13 stories above street level, and steel was up to the second floor.

“It’s on schedule and it’s on budget,” said John Gattuso, senior vice president and regional director for the tower’s developer, Liberty Property Trust.

The developer is projecting the first quarter of 2018 for completion of the core building, and of a new 222-room

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Four Seasons Hotel that will occupy the top floors. By that time, Comcast is expected to take occupancy of all the building’s 1.335 million square feet of office space, up from the 75 percent that it originally planned on.

Gattuso declined to comment on speculation — fueled by Liberty’s purchase of a nearby parcel of land — that Comcast is contemplating building a third tower.

“We have no plans underway,” he said. “It’s well publicized that we have acquired land on an adjacent block, but there’s no specific program tied to that right now. It’s for a future building at some point in time.”

M

illennials are the primary target of East Market, the residential, retail and office project that will occupy a 4-acre site bounded by Market, Chestnut, 11th and 12th streets.

Demolition crews have already transformed the landscape along Market Street, removing an unlovely 1960sera block. In its place will be a 322-unit residential building where one-bedroom apartments will start at $1,600 a month, and two bedrooms will go for $3,500. The development will include 16 retail units on the first two floors and 150,000 square feet of office space.

The first retail tenant, Mom’s Organic Market, at 34 S. 11th St., is expected to open in the spring of 2016 —when the first residents also are supposed to move in.

The $500 to $600 million East Market project is the latest iteration of the “live-work-play” concept that concentrates apartments, offices, restaurants and entertainment venues in proximity. Fashion, furniture and fitness will be among the targeted retailers, said Daniel Killinger, director of East Market developer National Real Estate Development.

Killinger said Clover and Ludlow streets will be paved with cobblestones and lined with retailers after having been effectively off limits to pedestrians for decades because of a loading dock and street closures for a former family court building.

The project will reopen Ludlow Street to traffic and create a 30-foot-wide pedestrian walkway between Market and Ludlow streets, eventually extending to Clover Street. The walkway will divide two new buildings fronting Market Street.

LEFT: At the Navy Yard, thousands of square feet of office and laboratory space, including this structure at 1200 Intrepid Ave., are being added to the spacious campus.

RIGHT: East Market, a retail-residentialoffice complex going up in a site bounded

by Market and Chestnut and 11th and 12th streets, will fill a blank spot in a mostly lively Center City.

“Our goal is to make them exciting, to be the place where people want to be,” he said.

The project — located between City Hall, Independence Mall, the Pennsylvania Convention Center and Jefferson Hospital — will fill in what has been effectively a blank spot in Center City, Killinger said.

“The idea is to find a way to reactivate this 4-acre site that has really been removed from the grid,” he said. “The vision is to take that large block and reconnect it to the city.”

Local real estate professionals see East Market as the first opportunity in decades to revitalize a section of Center City that has lagged surrounding areas in terms of economic development.

“This is the hole in the doughnut that is going to be filled,” said Clint Randall, a research analyst at Jones Lang LaSalle.

While the new developments are widely welcomed as a boost to the economy and to city tax revenues, they may also drive out lower-income people, perpetuating a cycle of inequality, said Beth McConnell, policy director for the Philadelphia Association of Community Development Corporations.

The association is urging city policymakers to require new residential development to be accompanied by affordable housing, as called for in the group’s policy paper on “Equitable Development” issued last year.

Without such a policy, people who cannot afford the new development will end up in neighborhoods

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that lack amenities such as good schools, grocery stores and green spaces, McConnell said.

The absence of affordable housing “continues to reinforce generations of economic inequality,” she said.

A

s millennials and other professionals demand a dense mixture of downtown development, they also seem to be content with the more spacious quarters offered by the Navy Yard only four miles away. The site, under development since 2004, continues to add office buildings and laboratories for companies whose activities range from manufacturing to finance to life science.

“Companies find it very easy to attract labor,” said Gattuso of Liberty Property Trust, which is developing the former Navy base as well as the new Comcast project. “There is a high demand for a highly skilled workforce.”

Gattuso said employees see the Navy Yard as a “pleasant, collaborative place” that is steadily adding “play” elements to its “work” environment. The Navy Yard is likely to see its first apartments, in accordance with its master plan, after completing negotiations with the U.S. Navy to remove restrictions on residential development, said John Grady, president of PIDC, the public-private economic development organization that has headed the repurposing of the Navy Yard. That is expected within the next two years.

For now, the Yard is pressing ahead with new construction on its tree-lined campus. Projects include a 94,000 square-foot office building and a 150,000 square-foot laboratory space for WuXi AppTec, an existing Navy Yard tenant that commercializes gene therapy conducted by the University of Pennsylvania.

Urban Outfitters, which first came to the Navy Yard with 600 employees, is now up to 2,200 in its corporate office there and is adding two new buildings, Grady said.

“There is this element of flexibility and growth that people really respond to, particularly younger companies that are in a more aggressive phase of growth,”

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PHIL ADELPHIA CI T Y PAPER // A UGUST 6 - A UGUST 12, 2015 // CI T YPAPER .NET

LEFT: The interior of the former University City High School in West Philly is visible as demolition makes way for a $1 billion expansion of the University City Science Center.

RIGHT: Fishtown’s former Ajax factory is being converted into The Fillmore Philadelphia, a live music venue. Hall and Oates are playing the sold-out opener on Oct. 1.

Grady said. He added that PIDC and Liberty will “tear up” leases if holders want to expand at the Navy Yard before their leases expire.

The Navy Yard has just completed the Central Green, a 4.5-acre park at the center of the campus, adding to recent “lifestyle” improvements such as the opening of a Vetri restaurant and ongoing efforts to encourage recreational use of the Navy Yard in the evenings and on weekends.

Grady argued that demand for space in the Navy Yard is also fueled by its proximity to Center City and the airport, and by its spacious suburban feel.

“It’s hard to find 1,000 acres near Center City,” he said. “Companies increasingly see that by creating the right kind of work environment you tend to get more productivity, you get more energy.”

Grady said a subway extension to the Yard would be a big boost to its growth, but that development plans are not dependent on it. “We’re optimistic about the subway,” he said. But “we’re not waiting for it.”

I

n West Philadelphia, the University City Science Center has launched a $1 billion project that could add some 4 million square feet in offices and labs, almost doubling its current footprint.

Its most visible development is the demolition of the former University City High School on a 17-acre site bounded by Market Street, Lancaster Avenue and 36th and 39th streets.

The organization plans to use about 10 acres to build offices, apartments and laboratory space for new tenants, while most of the remainder will house a K-8 STEM school being planned by Drexel University.

Science Center President Stephen Tang said the expansion toward Mantua and Powelton Village neighborhoods to the north represents an effort to bridge a wealth gap between the universities and sur-

rounding areas.

Officials at the 52-year-old Science Center want to facilitate a more socially inclusive approach by creating opportunities for local residents, he said.

“What’s commonly thought about innovation and entrepreneurship as the province of Ph.D.’s really has to be much more approachable to the entire community,” Tang said. “That means we have to make some sort of investment in not only the higher education … but we have to create entry points at the associatedegree level, at the high school level, at the G.E.D. level, as a way of making the innovation and entrepreneurship theme more available to them.”

A

cross town, at the intersection of Delaware and Frankford avenues in Fishtown, the former Ajax metalworking factory is being converted into Philly’s newest live-music venue.

The Fillmore Philadelphia, named after the legendary San Francisco space that hosted rock shows in the 1960s, is due to open on Oct. 1 with a sold-out show by Philly’s own Daryl Hall and John Oates. The makeover of the site is reportedly costing $32 million.

The project, led by concert promoter Live Nation, is creating a 2,500-seat main auditorium and a secondary space holding up to 450 for local singersongwriters and smaller touring bands. The new space adds to existing Philly area Live Nation venues, including Upper Darby’s Tower Theater and the TLA, and recognizes a “robust” local market for live music, said Ron Bension, president of House of Blues Entertainment, a unit of Live Nation.

Bension said the conversion of the abandoned factory mirrors the revitalization of Fishtown and is likely to appeal to the neighborhood’s artistic community, but he predicted the new space will attract music fans from across the city.

“When you are in Fishtown and Northern Liberties you often don’t feel that proximity to the Delaware, but having such a locus of activity on the river side of those neighborhoods is going to pull a lot of people down there,” predicted Randall of Jones Lang LaSalle.

He said the project represents a good reuse of the old

factory, and said it will help to create a new sense of place.

“It’s a home run for a use for that building,” he said.

“It’s sort of an unattractive location, which is often the best kind of spot to put a concert building — you don’t have the critical mass of immediately adjacent neighbors who would get up in arms about it.

“It’s finally creating a little bit of a ‘there there’ on the waterfront.”

The new venue is expected to attract millennials like Emily Carris, a photographer and gallery owner who fled New York for Philadelphia in 2012. Carris, 32, “lives and works” in the same building at Berks and Tulip streets in Fishtown. She “plays” in local venues, including the Go Vertical indoor climbing gym and Johnny Brenda’s music bar, and rarely strays outside of Fishtown and Northern Liberties because she says those neighborhoods have everything she needs.

She said Philadelphia’s lower costs gave her the opportunity to buy her own building and open a business, both of which would not have been possible in New York. Asked whether she planned to go to the new Fillmore, Carris said she was initially skeptical that it would succeed because it will be so close to the wellestablished Union Transfer on Spring Garden Street.

But she welcomes the addition of a new place to hear live music. “If it’s another place where I can go to hear bands, sure, I’ll go,” she said. (editorial@citypaper.net)

C I T Y PA P E R . N ET // A UGUST 6 - A UGUST 12, 2015 // PHIL ADELPHIA CI T Y PAPER

ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT

15

ARTS // MUSIC // T HEAT ER // BOOKS

LIT TLE BERLIN

FIRST FRIDAY FOCUS

BY MIKALA JAMISON

HAZY DAYS OF SUMMER ART

‘MY DREAM HOUSE’ AT LITTLE BERLIN What’s your idea of the perfect residence? Does your dream house include a wraparound porch, or one of those waterfall showers with a bench in it, or are you more of a well-appointed tiny house person? It’s likely that everyone’s got a different idea, and Little Berlin’s asked some artists to create work based on their ideal dream house.You might see a wild scale model or dazzlingly drawn floor plan, or pieces like a lifesize tanning bed light sculpture or sci-fiish household objects. The exhibition, LB says, “proposes that a dream house might only exist within our personal fantasies.” Sigh. Fri., Aug. 7, free, 6-10 p.m., Little Berlin, 2430 Coral St., littleberlin.org.

GROUP SHOW AT PII GALLERY Pii Gallery focuses mainly on contemporary artistic work from Eastern Europe, as well as the States. The space offers a new exhibition on the first of every month, and this month the show includes the work of four artists: Emily Strange, Troy X. Musto, Joanna Domanowska and Ewa Zeller.

From what we can gather, it will be a varied, interesting collection; Musto’s gold-tinted, provocative figures in particular leap off the canvas and Zeller’s still lifes recall Cézanne.

There are sure to be some pleasant surprises. Fri., Aug. 7, free, 6-9 p.m., Pii Gallery, 242 Race St., piigallery.com.

SKATE LAMPS AT EL BAR El Bar offers another First Friday event this month, this time featuring the work of Victor Perez. He’s a Fishtown local who was a semi-pro skateboarder in the ’70s and ’80s, and now creates artful lamps made from broken skateboards. He also uses old boards and decks to create chairs, shelves and various other furniture pieces and knickknacks. Perez DJs, too, as “DJ Pez,” and he’ll be spinning during the bash. Fri., Aug. 7, free, 7 p.m.-10 p.m. (21+), El Bar, 1356 N. Front St., skatelamps.com.

‘YOUR BRAIN ON MUSIC’ AT C H E M I C A L H E R I TA G E FOUNDATION OK, so it’s not visual art, but here’s a bonus First Friday event that sounds too interesting not to mention: The Foundation asks: “What chemical processes in the brain occur when you listen to your favorite song?”

While we’d argue that it depends on whether you’re in an “inspired by the world around you” or a “have just been dumped” mood, it sounds (ha) like it’ll be very cool to find out “what happens to your brain when you put on your headphones and turn up the sound.” Fri., Aug. 7, free, 5-8 p.m., Chemical Heritage Foundation, 315 Chestnut St., chemheritage.org. (mikala@citypaper.net, @notjameson)

You might see a wild scale model or dazzlingly drawn floor plan, or pieces like a lifesize tanning bed light sculpture or sci-fi-ish household objects.

SOUL PICNIC

MAT THEW MUSE

LET’S TABLE THIS DISCUSSION: Justin Cipa’s piece, Excavate, part of Little Berlin’s “My Dream House” exhibition.

SOUND ADVICE

BY PATRICK RAPA

AJA GRAYDON and Fatin Dantzler of Kindred the Family Soul have always been the first couple of neo soul, shining binary stars in a scene better known for producing singular vocal talents like Jill Scott, Musiq Soulchild and Jaguar Wright. The famous Black Lily nights are over, the Five Spot burned down, and Philly no longer has the neo-soul market cornered. But, with any luck, we’ll always have Kindred, the married couple with smooth, strong voices and a defining message that love can conquer all.

Recently, as murder and police brutality have once again come to national attention, Graydon has taken to Twitter to express her sadness and frustration: “So many #justicefor and #whathappenedto and #whokilled. … I feel like I’m looking at a war memorial.”

Says Dantzler, “We have always represented the power of love and how it has transformed our lives. We have also always been very vocal about issues facing the black community and the world at large. ... Today we find ourselves justifying our right to live. We are deeply concerned but still hopeful. Struggle breeds solidarity. This generation has tons of sleeping dragons, dynamic young people with a world view. Our hope is the current state will draw us all closer with a renewed sense of purpose.”

That appreciation for community is what drives them to put on the cheekily named Kindred the Family Reunion. The annual party and barbecue promises music performances, food, games and appearances by celebrities such as CNN’s Marc Lamont Hill, NFL-er Barrett Brooks and baseball superstar Mo’ne Davis.

“Imagine a giant hug for the whole community,” says Graydon. “And a softball game!”

Sun., Aug. 9, noon-5 p.m., free, Kindred the Family Reunion, Kingsessing Recreation Center, 4901 Kingsessing Ave., kindredthefamilysoul.com.

@MISSION2DENMARK

pat@citypaper.net

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PHIL ADELPHIA CI T Y PAPER // A UGUST 6 - A UGUST 12, 2015 // CI T YPAPER .NET

MOVIESHORTS

FILMS ARE GRADED BY CI T Y PAP ER CRI T ICS A-F.

REVIEWS

MR. MUMBLES: Marlon Brando, as he appears in A Streetcar Named Desire, provides the audio for Listen to Me Brando.

FILM SHORTS

LISTEN TO ME MARLON // B-

Like last year’s Muhammad Ali doc I Am Ali, Stevan Riley’s Listen to Me Marlon draws on hundreds of hours of private audio recordings that its subject – in this case Marlon Brando – made during his lifetime.

It also follows the rock docs Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck and Amy as portraits that steer away from talking-head interviews toward a more immersive foundfootage collage to paint a cumulative portrait. Listen to Me Marlon takes that idea to its extreme, using Brando’s voice to the exclusion of all other opinions.

The actor apparently had some form of self-portrait in mind, as his musings are always directed to some imaginary audience, poetic and performative despite their seeming intimacy.

That approach meshes with the screen icon’s professed opinions on his trade: All behavior, as he sees it, is a form of acting;

all identities, a conscious construct: He just got paid for it. Or, as he phrases it in one of his frequent bleaker moods, “Acting is surviving.” Riley’s assembly of Brando’s soliloquies offers a fascinating portrait of one of our greatest actors, whose ability to access the depths of his own emotions serves as both the source of his magnetic power and an explanation for his reclusiveness and pain. Hearing his firsthand account does much to counter the latter-day picture of him as a gluttonous eccentric. His odd turns become just another in a series of put-ons in a life devoted to the liar’s craft.

Riley’s visual accompaniments are less successful — at times becoming simply greatest-hits clip montages, at others clumsy dramatizations that do little more than fill the space around Brando’s compelling monologues.

—Shaun Brady (Ritz at the Bourse)

Phoenix

Film events and special screenings.

REPERTORY FILM

BY DREW LAZOR

AWESOME FEST AT LIBERTY LANDS

926 N. American St., theawesomefest.com. Sun Choke (2015, U.S., 90 min.): A troubled young woman’s mental health is threatened when she develops a fixation on a mysterious stranger. Fri., Aug. 7, 9 p.m., free.

INTERNATIONAL HOUSE

3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, ihousephilly. org. Stories From Non-Putin Russia: This revealing two-night documentary series will provide one-of-a-kind access into the real Russia, from a feature about a miraculous pregnancy in a small village to a story about an isolated family living in Siberia. Full details at ihousephilly. org. Thu.-Fri., Aug. 6-7, 7 p.m., $7. Patema Inverted (2013, Japan, 99 min.): Two kids from wildly different universes team up to bring their worlds together in this inventive science-fiction anime. Sat., Aug. 8, 2 p.m., $5. Beware of a Holy Whore (1970, Germany, 104 min.): Director Rainer Werner Fassbinder skewers his own moviemaking process with this incisive and super-German feature. Sat., Aug. 8, 7 p.m., $9.

LA PEG

140 N. Columbus Blvd., 215-375-7744, lapegbrasserie.com. Jaws (1975, U.S., 124 min.): “Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.”

Wed., Aug. 12, 8:30 p.m., free.

PFS THEATER AT THE ROXY

PHOENIX // A

Nina Hoss and Christian Petzold may have the most vital actor/director partnership in movies at the moment, and Phoenix, a Vertigo-inflected take on German war guilt, is all the proof you need. Hoss plays Nelly, a concentration camp survivor who, disfigured and rendered unrecognizable by facial reconstructive surgery, returns to Berlin to seek out the husband (Ronald Zehrfeld) who may have betrayed her. Hoss and Zehrfeld have the looks and the bearing of classic Hollywood stars, and Phoenix, co-written by the didactic film essayist Harun Farocki, evokes both the political and the cinematic landscapes of

the 1940s, which is to say it’s implicitly about the horrors of genocide and the ways we use fiction to escape them. The preposterousness of the movie’s premise — that a woman could A) come out of plastic surgery in 1945 looking like Nina Hoss, and B) develop a relationship with her husband using that new face and have him be none the wiser — becomes a strength: The truth is always visible, except to those for whom it is most convenient to be blind. —Sam Adams (Ritz Five)

citypaper.net/movies

2023 Sansom St., 267-639-9508, filmadelphia.org/ roxy. Carrie (1976, U.S., 98 min.): “They’re all going to laugh at you!” Thu., Aug. 6, 10:30 p.m., and Fri., Aug. 7, midnight, $10. Igor and the Cranes’ Journey (2012, Israel/Germany/Poland, 90 min.): A young boy moves from Russia to Israel, staying connected with the father he left behind by caring for a baby crane (an actual one, not a paper one).

Sat.-Sun., Aug. 8-9, 11 a.m., $10. The Devil’s Backbone (2001, Spain, 106 min.): A young boy whose father has perished in the Spanish Civil War moves into an extremely haunted orphanage. The rare horror film that’s also a total tearjerker. :*( Sat., Aug. 8, midnight, $12. Fishtail (2014, U.S., 61 min.):This Harry Dean Stanton-narrated documentary follows the exploits of cowboys working on Montana’s Fishtail Basin Ranch. Director Andrew Renzi will be in attendance. The screening is free, but tickets are first-come, first-served. Tue., Aug. 11, 7:30 p.m., free. Carmen (2015, U.K., 165 min.): Calixto Bieito reinvents the popular opera, setting it in post-Franco Spain. Wed., Aug. 12, 7 p.m., $12.

RITZ AT THE BOURSE

400 Ranstead St., 215-440-1181, landmarktheatres.com. Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (2010, U.S., 112 min.): “Bread makes you fat?!” Fri., Aug. 7, midnight, $10.

TROCADERO THEATRE

1003 Arch St., 215-922-6888, thetroc.com.

Divergent (2014, U.S. 139 min.) and Insurgent (2015, U.S., 119 min.): Dystopian double feature that Shailene Woodley is way too talented to be starring in, but whatever makes that money, Shay. Mon., Aug. 10, 8 p.m, $3.

C I T Y PA P E R . N ET

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17 // A UGUST 6 - A UGUST 12, 2015 // PHIL ADELPHIA CI T Y PAPER

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: AUGUST 06 - AUGUST 12 :

GET OU T T HERE

BY ERNEST HEMINGWAY

NICKI MINAJ/ MEEK MILL

ASK PAPA

HIP-HOP/R&B

EVENTS

Hip-hop’s first couple of the moment, never known for their docility, have been doing a lot of pot-stirring lately, between Nicki’s Swiftbaiting sour grapes over the Video Music Awards nominations and Meek’s righteous Twitter assaults on Drake’s realness. (I suppose, as fellow Philadelphians, we’re vaguely obligated to side with Mill, although the whole business feels pretty silly and rather charmingly old-fashioned.)Whether all this hashtag-heavy topicality makes for a compelling mega-concert remains to be seen, though at least they’ll have plenty to talk about. —K. Ross Hoffman

thursday

energy. Presented by our pals at XPN’s The Key, this show should be a feel-good, late-summer love-in. —Patrick Rapa

8.6

RESTORATIONS/ DRGN KING

f riday

Free // Thu., Aug. 6, 8 p.m., Spruce Street Harbor Park, Columbus Blvd. at Spruce St., thekey.xpn. org, delawareriverwaterfront.com.

8.7

GAYFEST! $15-$25 // Aug. 7-22, Quince Productions at Plays & Players’ Skinner Studio, 1714 Delancey St., and Studio X, 1340 S. 13th St., quince productions.com.

ANDREW SWARTZ

ROCK/POP Both of these bands dropped impressive records in 2014. For Restorations, it was the gorgeously no-frills LP3, which finessed early Springsteen desperation into heavy guitars and exhilarating choruses.

DRGN King’s Baltimore Crush — we’ve all been there — was an ornately rocking/strangely danceable album propelled by handsome melodies and nervous

THEATER Quince Productions’ August celebration of gay theater turns five this year, and artistic director Rich Rubin has again assembled an impressive range of events. The 16-day festival starts with four performances of At the Flash (Aug. 7-9) at Plays & Players, including Friday’s opening night with reception and raffle. Sean Chandler and David Leeper’s one-man show features Leeper playing characters from 50 years of a gay

WHERE’S THE BEEF?: $25-$144.50 // Thu., Aug., 6, 7 p.m., with Rae Sremmurd, Tinashe and Dej Loaf, Susquehanna Bank Center, 1 Harbour Blvd., Camden, 800-745-3000, livenation.com.

HOWARD HUANG

bar’s wild history. Jack Tamburri directs The Secretaries (Aug. 9-22), a comedy by the Five Lesbian Brothers — an ensemble that includes Tony Award-winning playwright Lisa Kron — and featuring the always-hilarious Jennifer MacMillan. The festival continues with three other full-length plays, all in repertory, along with several “One Night Stands,” a lineup of solo shows that includes song, dance, comedy, storytelling and drama.

—Mark Cofta

DESAPARECIDOS

$25 // Fri., Aug. 7, 8:30 p.m., with The So So Glos and The Banddroidz, Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St., 215-2322100, utphilly.com.

ROCK/POP Des a parecid os started as a 2001 side project by Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes and their Read Music/Speak Spanish garnered more

attention than expected before they broke up the next year. With Oberst’s shaky and affective vocals, Des a parecidos offered Bright Eyes fans a louder and more political Conor.

Thirteen years later, Desaparecidos has released their sophomore album Payola (Epitaph Records) and have transformed into a fully functioning band. Openers from New York are The So So Glows o f Bro o k l y n a n d t h e Banddroidz of Harlem.

—Cynthia Schemmer

sunday

8.9

MATH THE BAND $6 // Sun., Aug. 9, 8 p.m., with The Cats, Phet Phet and the Glow in the Darks, Kung Fu Necktie, 1250 N. Front St., 215-291-4919, kungfunecktie.com.

PUNK/POP Hard to be-

Ernest communicates with writer Alli Katz via Ouija board.

Send her your questions for Papa.

18

HOW WILL I KNOW? DEAR PAPA: I recently got out of a very long relationship and am dating someone new.

How can I determine whether my new relationship is the real thing, or just a rebound?

—Confused in Kensington DEAR CONFUSED: It is important when you’re fishing to know whether you have an amberjack or a dorado on your line, because it will change the way you fight on the water.

It is also very important to know whether your bus is going to Barcelona to see friends or back to Paris to see your wife; it’s also important to know whether you would like a hamburger or beef Wellington for dinner. It would be good then to know what kind of partnership you have gotten yourself into. But you would likely be happy with either fish, either town or either dinner. If this is a person who makes you happy right now, then that is enough and you do not need to know any more. —Papa DEAR PAPA: I’m starting an alarmingly fancy new job in two weeks, one where I’ll have to boss a lot of people around. How can I instantly convey to my new minions that I am benevolent but very much still a dictator?

—Boss in Bryn Mawr DEAR BOSS: It should not matter what anyone thinks of you so long as the work is good, but when you are the captain, the hands are as much the work as the sailing. Find yourself the finest first mate you can and let the mate handle the intrigue and politics. Let your approval and disapproval be known through a narrowing of your eyes, and you will be looked on as a leader of action but also of mystery, and your staff will quickly fall in line. —Papa

askpapa@citypaper.net

lieve this strange little dance-punk duo from Providence, R.I., has been doing their thing for almost 15 years.

Their thing, specifically, involves making high-energy rock songs with guitars, synths and hacked video-game consoles. That kind of nostalgia-based noodling can sometimes lead to some place chilly and reverent, but Math the Band does it

hot, wild and spazzed out. —Patrick Rapa

LIMP WRIST $10-$12 // Sun., Aug. 9, 5 p.m., with Young Trynas, Moor Mother Goddess, Sorrows and DJ Dame Luz, First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut St., 215-5633980, r5productions.com.

PUNK/ROCK Since their first band practice in Philadelphia in ’98,

C I T Y PA P E R . N ET // A UGUST 6 - A UGUST 12, 2015 // PHIL ADELPHIA

the members of Limp Wrist have rarely lived in the same city, but that hasn’t stopped them from kicking out their much-needed hardcore jams. They represent a crucial, queercore punk strain of hardcore where — let’s face it — hypermasculinity has ruined the scene for many. With gang vocals, breakdowns and songs that often clock in under a minute, Limp Wrist keeps punk the way it should be: loud, weird and queer.

—Cynthia Schemmer

monday

8.10

ARIEL KALMA AND ROBERT AIKI AUBREY LOWE

$12 // Mon., Aug. 10, 7 p.m., with Non-Human Persons, Bartram’s Garden, 5400 Lindbergh Blvd., 215-729-5281, bartramsgarden.org, datagarden.brownpapertickets.com.

NEW AGE/AMBIENT/ ELECTRONIC Last

year the forward-thinking folks at RVNG Intl. compiled some unreleased 1970s proto-New Age tape recordings by Paris-born composer and experimental musical wayfarer Ariel Kalma; this spring they linked him up with latter-day psychospiritualist Robert A.A. Lowe (Lichens, Om) for the 12th installment of their intergenerational FRKWYS collaboration series. The resulting

We Know Each Other Somehow LP opens in a dense field-recorded thicket of droplets and crickets before wading deep into drone, saxophony and meandering modular synthesis — so it feels fitting that they’ll be performing by the river with, apparently, an actual plant as the opening act. —K. Ross Hoffman

tuesday

8.11

LITHUANIA $10 // Tue., Aug. 11, 8:30 p.m., with Year of Glad and Anomie, Boot & Saddle, 1131 S. Broad St., 877-4359849, bootandsaddlephilly.com.

ROCK Lithuania is DRGN King frontman Dominic Angelella and Dr. Dog drummer Eric Slick, and while the duo has been chipping away at their raw rock side project for some

19

time, they’re only now getting around to releasing a debut record.

Hardcore Friends (Lame-

O Records) is a mix of songs the guys have had under their belts since 2007, along with a few brand new tracks — all recorded in the studio in five days. (That is, in fact, pretty hardcore.)

—Nikki Volpicelli

citypaper.net/events

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PHIL ADELPHIA CI T Y PAPER // A UGUST 6 - A UGUST 12, 2015 // CI T YPAPER .NET

FOOD&DRINK

REVIEWS // OPENIN GS // LIST IN GS // RECIPES

FOOD FINDERS: Philadelphia brothers Adam and Andrew Erace, owners of Green Aisle Grocery, host Great American Food Finds.

RICH FREEDA

interviews, production meetings and test shoots that would follow over the next seven months.

SO DO HOBBIES. Something you need to know about us: My brother and I are travel obsessives. We know airport codes by heart, make contests out of finding the best mile redemptions to Cartagena or Colombo, harass American Airlines on Twitter to launch direct service from Philly to Mexico City (it’s going to happen). We’re fortunate enough to travel a lot, and we’re always texting each other pictures of the interesting, delicious, Green Aisle-able products we discover during our respective trips. So the show seemed like a perfect fit.

ON FOOD SHOWS

BY ADAM ERACE

TV TAKEAWAYS

City Paper’s food critic relates five lessons he learned while filming his recently premiered Food Network series.

THE FIRST TIME I saw myself on TV I was stretched out on a couch with my wife, Charlotte, in an Airbnb-ed cottage on the coast of Connecticut. Our little New England getaway had been an idyllic carousel of windswept beaches and ice cream cones, until the texts and phone calls started streaming in that the Food Network had just aired the first commercial for Great American Food Finds, the road trip-format show I shot with my brother, Andrew, over the course of four weeks in May and June.

So there we were, glued to a Chopped marathon, waiting for the spot to appear, and on about the seventh commercial break, it popped on the screen.

It was a surreal feeling, seeing myself on TV — something I’ve avoided since I started reviewing restaurants 10 years ago. Even as Green Aisle Grocery, the group of stores my brother and I own, became popular enough to warrant occasional news coverage, I’d always defer camera work to Andrew. But the opportunity to make a show for the Food Network — and possibly get invited over for a long weekend at Ina Garten’s Hamptons estate — was too good not to explore.

Great American Food Finds premiered Monday, and it will probably be a while until we know if the show is picked up for a second season. Andrew and I are hopeful, of course, but even if nothing else comes of it, the experience was unforgettable and I learned a lot. In lieu of a review this week, I thought I’d share some of those lessons.

EXPERIENCE HELPS. In September, publicist Alethia Calbeck of Profile PR emailed us a casting notice that a production company and major network — we didn’t know it was the Food Network — were looking to cast two hosts for a new show about going around the country, finding foods in a retail context. Which is something Andrew and I already do, a line we would echo over and over during the casting

EDITOR’S NOTE // Adam Erace will continue to serve as City Paper’s restaurant critic even though his image has been shown on TV and is printed in this week’s paper.

We’ve decided his knowledge of Philadelphia’s dining scene and his engaging writing make his work invaluable to the paper. For a fuller examination of the anonymity of a restaurant critic in the Internet era, see Los Angeles T imes critic Jonathan Gold’s January 2015 article on unmasking himself.

—Lillian Swanson

citypaper.net/mealticket

THE FOOD AVAILABLE WHILE FILMING ISN’T ALWAYS OPTIMAL. I’d be lying if I said the long hours filming didn’t necessitate some questionable food choices. I ate a lot of breakfast-buffet “eggs,” too many chicken Caesar salads to count and one bizarre fluorescent-lit dinner at a kooky Roman-themed resort in the Catskills’ Borscht Belt that was like Caesar’s Palace’s inbred country cousin.

SOME OF THE BEST RESTAURANTS ARE FOUND OUT IN THE COUNTRY. I also enjoyed some of my year’s most memorable eating experiences during our month of filming. Like the sauce-smothered, thoroughly barbecued chicken at Brooks’ House of BBQ, a 54-year-old classic with rooster-print wallpaper and an old-school salad bar in Oneonta, N.Y. I finally got to try the famed paletas at La Michocana in Kennett Square, and I met a German baker in West Chester whose pretzels and strudels I’m still thinking about. Strawberries were just peeking into season when I was passing through Bantam, Conn.; chef Dan Magill deployed them to hazelnut-flecked arugula salad, a sour cream biscuit and a knockout Peking duck at Arethusa al Tavolo, the fine-dining spin-off of a dairy farm opened by a couple of Manolo Blahnik executives.

THERE’S MORE TO SEE AND EAT. Andrew was driving as we passed Hot Dog Johnny’s, a shamrock-and-tangerine stand with a patio hugging a scenic bend in the Pequest River in Warren County, New Jersey. A painted sign advertised frosted birch beer and fresh buttermilk, so how could I not want to stop, even if we’d just eaten? Andrew was being a brat and refused to pull over, so if anyone is down, I’m trying to make a trip back there. (aerace.citypaper@gmail.com, @adamerace) Great American Food Finds airs Mondays at 9:30 p.m. on the Food Network.

PHIL ADELPHIA CI T Y PAPER // A UGUST 6 - A UGUST 12, 2015 // CI T YPAPER .NET

BY MATT JONES

JONESIN ’

SOUR POWER

“ DUAL ROLES” we’re going to name names.

COLLEEN DEMENNA

PICK YOUR POISON

BY JENN LADD

A recurring column on Philadelphia’s beverages.

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CRIME + PUNISHMENT // 2711 W. Girard Ave., 215-235-2739, crimeandpunishmentbrewery.com. Thurs.-Sun. 4 p.m.-midnight.

WHEN CRIME + PUNISHMENT Brewing Co. suds-meisters Mike Wambolt and Mike Paul brewed their first batch of Grodziskie — a recently revived smoked-wheat beer style — they weren’t thrilled with the results.

“It tasted like a Blue Moon full of smoke,” Wambolt says. He had read articles about Grodziskie, which had effectively gone extinct in the mid-1990s, that described the style as “‘Polish champagne,’ very crisp, carbonation on it, light and refreshing. And that first one we did was not very refreshing at all, even though it was a 5 percent wheat beer.”

The recipe they followed that first go-round called for smoked wheat malt exclusively, which gave the beer a pillowy mouth feel but also a monstrous smoke flavor that soured both brewers on the beer.

But Wambolt and Paul, six-year veteran homebrewers, kept fielding requests for wheat beers. When they and five other partners finally opened Crime + Punishment in Brewerytown in mid-July, they wanted a wheat offering on draft. So they tinkered with the Grodziskie recipe, using a brewing technique called kettle souring to add acidity. That effectively cut the overpowering smoke, and the brewery’s “Grod Inquisitor” Grodziskie was born. The smoked sour wheat beer pairs especially well with the brewpub’s Eastern European food menu, which features pierogies, kielbasa and borscht.

The Grod Inquisitor is not the brewpub’s best-seller, Paul says, but he thinks it’ll be on draft for a while. “Whenever someone asks about it and I let them try it, they’ll always order it,” he says.

Wambolt and Paul plan to do more non-traditional or forgotten styles as they churn out more beers on Crime + Punishment’s seven-barrel brewhouse. But they’re also incorporating familiar varietals — pale ales, IPAs, farmhouse ales — that seasoned and novice craft beer drinkers alike can put down with pleasure.

“We try to have beer for everybody,” Wambolt says. “That’s why the blond ale’s on, and even the raspberry [Berliner Weisse]’s very approachable.”

Still, don’t expect the brewers to cater to the crowd all the time. “I think it’s important, too,” Wambolt says, “when people come in here to know that we also want to push the envelope a bit on your palate.” (jenn@citypaper.net, @jrladd)

©2015 Jonesin’ Crosswords (editor@jonesincrosswords.com)

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