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STAY UP LATE AND SLEEP THE MORNING AWAY. SEPTA’S RUNNING 24 HOURS. The Broad Street and Market-Frankford Lines are running all night long, all weekend long, all summer long.
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cpstaff We made this
KAI!
6-12 MONTHS OLD I’m Kai, a 6-12 month old pit bull/husky mix who was rescued from the street. I’ve got lots of energy and get along well with dogs and children. Please give me a home! PAWS Northeast Adoption Center at 1810 Grant Avenue (at Bustleton). All PAWS animals are spayed/neutered, vaccinated, and microchipped before adoption.
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 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 Maggie Grabmeier, Jim Saksa, Lauren Clem, Katie Krzaczek, Indie Jimenez Production Director Michael Polimeno Editorial Art Director Allie Rossignol Advertising Art Director Evan M. Lopez Senior Editorial Designer Brenna Adams Editorial Designer Jenni Betz Contributing Photographers Jessica Kourkounis, Maria Pouchnikova, Neal Santos, 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), Thomas Geonnotti (ext. 258), Sharon MacWilliams (ext. 262) Office Coordinator/Adult Advertising Sales Alexis Pierce (ext. 234) Founder & Editor Emeritus Bruce Schimmel
citypaper.net 30 South 15th Street, Fourteenth Floor, Phila., PA 19102. 215-735-8444, Tip Line 215-735-8444 ext. 241, Listings Fax 215-875-1800, Advertising Fax 215-735-8535, Subscriptions 215-735-8444 ext. 235 The printing of City Paper was provided by Calkins Media (215-949-4224). Philadelphia City Paper is published and distributed every Thursday in Philadelphia, Montgomery, Chester, Bucks & Delaware Counties, in South Jersey and in Northern Delaware. Philadelphia City Paper is available free of charge, limited to one copy per reader. Additional copies may be purchased from our main office at $1 per copy. No person may, without prior written permission from Philadelphia City Paper, take more than one copy of each issue. Pennsylvania law prohibits any person from inserting printed material of any kind into any newspaper without the consent of the owner or publisher. Contents copyright © 2014, Philadelphia City Paper. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Philadelphia City Paper assumes no obligation (other than cancellation of charges for actual space occupied) for accidental errors in advertising, but will be glad to furnish a signed letter to the buying public.
contents Cover story, see p. 12
Naked City ...................................................................................6 A&E ...............................................................................................22 Movies.........................................................................................26 Events..........................................................................................28 Food ..............................................................................................33 DESIGN BY ALLIE ROSSIGNOL
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thebellcurve CP’s Quality-o-Life-o-Meter
[ +2 ]
An Inky editorial endorses City Council’s proposal to reduce penalties for possession of small amounts of pot.And leaves the rest of the page blank for rolling papers.
[ -4 ]
Mayor Nutter calls City Council’s marijuana proposal a “simplistic” approach to a “tremendously complicated societal issue and challenge.” Adding: “Just say no.”
[ -1 ]
PPA issues a ticket to a man parking in Center City before he gets out of his car, in what the Daily News says could be the “fastest parking ticket on record.” Adding: “Nobody actually keeps records of these things, of course.”
[ -2 ]
A South Philly woman faces possible prison time for bringing her legally owned handgun to New Jersey, which doesn’t recognize other states’ carry permits. “I mean, they look familiar,” says Jersey. “But I, like, can’t place it, you know?”
[ -1 ]
[ -1 ]
+
A West Philly church that opened in 1887 will close and the future of the building remains in doubt since it has no “architectural, historical or artistic significance.” “Yeah, fuck that place,” says Inga Saffron. The bomb squad detonates a suspicious device in a Dumpster in the Eraserhood that turns out to be a prop pipe bomb from a play. “It’s Theater 101, people,” says the bomb tech. “If you put a bomb in Act 1, shit better blow up before intermission.”
[ 1]
A local entrepreneur is developing a small alarm/flashing-light system people can wear in case of attack called Roar, after the Katy Perry song. “It’s technically not supposed to make whipped cream come shooting out of the wearer’s nipples,” she says. “But right now we’re treating it like a feature, not a bug.”
[ +1 ]
The Corbett administration gives a $5 million grant to the Art Museum, which will go toward its $350 million renovation project. “See that, you whiny teachers? I do it to everybody.”
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EVAN M. LOPEZ
[ police ]
BADGE OF DISHONOR Prosecutors persist in calling a police officer who admitted to lying in open court. By Daniel Denvir n December 2011, Philadelphia Police Officer Christopher Hulmes made the startling admission that he had lied to court officials in statements he gave during a narcotics case against Arthur Rowland, whom he had arrested in Kensington. “I changed it,” Hulmes testified, saying he had moved back by three hours the time he allegedly set up surveillance of a suspected drug corner. It was one of a few misrepresentations he made, including false statements as to what activity took place prior to Rowland’s arrest. “I told you, I concealed [my informant’s] identity. I changed the times. I changed the times because I did not want him hurt or harmed in any way.” Common Pleas Court Judge James Murray Lynn condemned Hulmes’ lying and granted the defense’s motion to suppress evidence of seized drugs, a gun and money. The district attorney dropped charges against Rowland as a result. Assistant District Attorney Tracy Piatkowski, present to receive Judge Lynn’s ruling, said that she would “review it with my supervisors.” But nothing seemed to come of it.
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City Paper has learned that prosecutors have continued to call Officer Hulmes to testify and have failed to turn over evidence to defense lawyers of his admitted lying — even amid the explosive federal indictments issued last week against city narcotics officers. An unknown number of cases involving Officer Hulmes could be subject to challenge now that his admitted lying has been uncovered. “I think the cases in which he testified after Judge Lynn made his ruling — in which the prosecutor did not disclose that ruling to the defense — ought to be reexamined,” says civil rights lawyer David Rudovsky. “And beyond that, both the Police Department and the District Attorney ought to consider whether Officer Hulmes should be investigating and testifying in narcotics cases.” The District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on Officer Hulmes, whom it has called to testify in narcotics cases as recently as June. The Police Department says that Internal Affairs is not familiar with Judge Lynn’s ruling. “They don’t have it,” says police spokesperson Officer Tanya Little. “They can’t comment on something they haven’t investigated.” Officer Hulmes, according to Judge Lynn’s explanation of his Jan. 24, 2012, ruling, “forthrightly testified to the Court that he lied consistently throughout to the [warrant-]issuing magistrate and that he lied at the preliminary hearing and that he lied to his K-9 officer, all because he was trying to protect the identity of the confidential informant.”
A judge condemned the officer’s lies.
>>> continued on page 8
[ the answer is in the tapes ] [ a million stories ]
✚ A DEEP DIVE INTO WATERGATE Forty years ago Saturday, Richard M. Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign from office, just one step ahead of his likely impeachment for his role in covering up the burglary of the Democratic National Headquarters at the Watergate hotel and apartment complex. Much of the nation had watched on television as star witness John Dean, Nixon’s legal counsel, told a Senate Watergate hearing about conversations he had with Nixon about the scandal right in the Oval Office. Four decades later, Dean is still Watergate’s star witness, and last Thursday he revealed his deepest testimony yet to a crowd at the Philadelphia Free Library. A packed house of about 375 people — with maybe two people under 40 — listened to Dean promote his new book, The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It (Viking), and tell of the new scandals he discovered from digitizing and transcribing 1,000 Watergate tapes. From what he described, there are no new smoking guns here. (We were shocked, shocked to hear that an ambassadorship was for sale.) But the new transcriptions mean there are now four million words of Nixon on Watergate. Dean is 75, still slim and ever a natty dresser, but now he’s white-haired and partially bald. Dean clearly knows what people want to know, and he delivers in the same clear-as-a bell voice, speaking in long paragraphs rather than sentences. He told the crowd that his editor at Viking wanted to know, as the 40th anniversary of Watergate approached, if there were still any unanswered questions. Dean said he thought about that query
and decided it was this: “How could someone as politically shrewd as Nixon have blown his presidency in this way?” “I think the answer might be in the tapes,” Dean said he told his editor. Thus, he began what is no doubt the deepest dive yet into what the president knew and when he knew it — the famous central question posed by the late Sen. Howard Baker at the Watergate hearing. At the Free Library, Dean played excerpts from several tapes, and at one point showed an image of Nixon relaxing with his feet on his desk in the Oval Office. He said that was often how the president appeared when Dean was talking to him. As Dean famously told him, “We have a cancer … close to the presidency” and outlined his case, point by point, Dean says, “Nixon slowly drew his feet off the desk,” and planted them firmly on the floor. Thus, in addition to the conversations, we get a glimpse of a very human reaction. Dean maintains that he wasn’t aware at the time of the soundactivated taping systems in the Oval Office, Executive Office Building, Camp David and even a phone in the White House residence. He says he believes Nixon often forgot the systems were there. As for the famous 18-and-a-half minute gap in one tape — one that supposedly required Nixon secretary Rose Mary Woods to contort in a way that would make a Circe du Soleil performer jealous — Dean says he is sure of what was once there because other tapes from that week were filled with conversation about the cover-up. “It is very clear there was a passing reference of some kind that this had to be covered up,” he asserted.
“Nixon slowly drew his feet off the desk.”
—Lillian Swanson
photostream ➤ submit to photostream@citypaper.net
SELFIE: An emcee at the Acana African Festival at Penn’s Landing on Sunday borrows a page from Ellen DeGeneres’ Academy Awards stunt and takes a smartphone photo of himself, Miss Liberia in the USA 2014, MoAndra Johnson (second from right), and other royalty. LASHAWN HAND
billypulpit By Brett Mandel
BIG, BOLD AND PHILLY BORN ➤ PHILADELPHIA WAS ONCE the city of
“firsts,” teeming with the energy and entrepreneurialism that established the nation’s first hospital and first zoo. Philadelphia built its City Hall to be the tallest building in the world. But our atty-tude has long since become content to lag. We have become a city that constantly tests new ideas by asking, “Where else has this worked?” instead of boldly stating, “We will show the world the way.” I propose that Philadelphia establish two incentive prizes. One would be for the next big thing created here that would be a first in the world. The other would be for something that would be an international superlative — the world’s largest hover-port, to suggest just one idea. Incentive prizes have facilitated and encouraged creative thinking and great advancements for centuries. Recently, the Ansari X Prize offered $10 million to the creator of the first craft to take passengers into space, return them safely and then do it again a few days later. The winning technology is being used today by Virgin Galactic, which is building a spaceport in New Mexico for commercial space tourists. Such prizes reward far more than the victors. The lucrative bounty has the potential to jumpstart investments by competitors that dwarf the amount of the prize itself.And the knowledge gained by all participants in pursuit of the prize creates important advances beyond those put forth by the ultimate winner. In Philadelphia, we could create two programs funded, perhaps, through a partnership involving local government, corporate, academic and philanthropic entities to establish a $1 million prize for the next significant “Philadelphia First” and another prize for the next “World’s Greatest in Philadelphia.” The prizes would be awarded through a juried and time-certain process to create an exciting race to the finish that will result in something to shape the future of our city — and our world. Philadelphia used to be a city where new ideas were launched, and then spread to the rest of the world. It is time to inspire — and incentivize — bold thinking again. Who will join in? ✚ Brett Mandel is a lifelong Philadelphian and civic
entrepreneur. Contact him at brett@libertynet.org.
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[ the naked city ]
TRIAL LIST: District Attorney Seth Williams’ Office has used Officer Hulmes as a witness as recently as June. JESSICA KOURKOUNIS
✚ Badge Of Dishonor <<< continued from page 6
Hulmes also admitted that he lied about the time of Rowland’s arrest, saying that it was somehow related to “trying to maintain a timeline so [my informant] wasn’t indicated as a snitch.” Judge Lynn chastised the District Attorney’s Office, insisting that “you cannot put an officer on the witness stand who is going to say, ‘I lied to an issuing magistrate.’ You cannot do that.” He called Hulmes’ testimony “reprehensible,” saying “you cannot lie to the judges and expect the judges to do justice. It cannot be done. It is not the way this country was founded; it is not the way this country works.” Hulmes could not be reached for comment. “I’ve walked into courtrooms in the last months and I’ve seen him on the witness stand,” says Rowland’s attorney, Guy Sciolla. “And it just blows me away.” ➤ PROTECTING AN INFORMANT is not grounds to lie, as Judge Lynn pointed out. And the hearing testimony suggests questions about Hulmes’ true motivation. Among other problems, Hulmes only obtained the search warrant for Rowland’s vehicle many hours after he first searched it and claimed to have found crack cocaine inside. The vehicle was then removed to a nearby parking lot, against department regulations, where it was subject to a second warrantless search by a K-9 dog. In his testimony, K-9 Officer John Snyder contradicted Hulmes, stating that Hulmes had told him they had consent from the owner to search. The alleged informant, whose name City Paper is withholding, also contradicted Hulmes’ account in an Internal Affairs investigation that took place prior to the December 2011 hearing. He told Internal Affairs investigators that he had given Hulmes and Officer Patrick Banning the names of two purported drug suspects, but not Rowland’s, after the officers had harassed and threatened to jail him. Internal Affairs found that Hulmes violated Police Department regulations by using an informant who was not officially registered with the Police Department. Sciolla pointed out that Officer Banning, who took part in Rowland’s arrest, then 8 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |
arrested the alleged informant in November 2011 on drug charges. Sciolla suggested it was retaliation for speaking to Internal Affairs against Hulmes. Rowland, says Sciolla, spent 37 months in jail awaiting trial. The fact that Officer Hulmes remains in the Narcotics Strike Force and continues to testify against drug defendants raises questions about the DA’s commitment to rooting out bad officers. “Now here you got a cop that admitted that he lied,” says Sciolla. “Yet you’re going to put this guy on a witness stand?” The DA has failed to provide this evidence of Hulmes’ lack of credibility to defense attorneys. Such disclosure is likely required by the Brady rule, stemming from a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that requires the government to turn over any material exculpatory evidence in its possession to the defense. Defense attorney Christopher P. Phillips is one of only a few lawyers who has recently managed to find out about Officer Hulmes’ lying. In August 2013, he filed a motion requesting that evidence of Hulmes’ lying be admitted into evidence in the case of Terrance Clark, who faces drugs, weapons and assault charges after being arrested by Hulmes in 2010. Phillips says that the district attorney never provided this information to him and that he only found out about it when he encountered Guy Sciolla in a Criminal Justice Center hallway. “I just happened to run into an attorney who litigated the motion,” says Phillips. “I know other lawyers will be very interested that have cases involving this officer.” ➤ AT THE TIME OF Rowland’s hearing, Assistant District Attorney
Joe Schultz seemed uncertain about Hulmes’ testimony against the defendant. Schultz declined to call the officer to testify. Instead, Sciolla called him to the stand and examined him as a hostile witness. Sciolla says that the District Attorney’s Office appears to know Hulmes’ liability — but insists on calling him to testify nonetheless. He says the prosecutor who was handling the Terrance Clark case, Assistant District Attorney A.J. Thomson, argued to his superiors that it was wrong to put Hulmes on the stand. “I was informed that he confronted his supervisor and told them that he didn’t want to put the case on,” says Sciolla.
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Thomson, who has retained Rudovsky as his lawyer, for unclear reasons no longer works at the DA’s office. Thomson declined a City Paper interview request. Last week, the U.S. Attorney announced charges against Thomas Liciardello and five other narcotics officers who are accused of robbing and beating suspected drug dealers. The officers had been frequently accused of falsifying evidence, conducting illegal searches and other wrongdoing for years. The Police Department only transferred Liciardello and his fellow officers out of narcotics in December 2012 because District Attorney Seth Williams’ office announced that they would no longer call them as witnesses due to concerns about their credibility. But the DA only moved against the officers after civil rights lawyer Larry Krasner accused them of misconduct before Municipal Court Judge Charles Hayden, who then ordered police and the DA to turn over records on 11 officers. And federal law enforcement had reportedly refused to prosecute cases involving the officers since years before the DA decided to follow suit. It is unclear how many cases that Officer Hulmes has testified in. His admitted lying could make any case in which he testified a target for defense attorneys and for plaintiffs’ lawyers who bring suit against Hulmes and the city. Stephen O’Hanlon is one plaintiff’s lawyer already suing Hulmes. But he says he had no idea that Hulmes’ was an admitted perjurer before being contacted by City Paper. “This is all very strange,” O’Hanlon said. Police Internal Affairs told him it would provide Hulmes’ file to him, he says. But soon, someone from the office called back and said, “Oh, there’s some problem with this file. There’s sensitive material. I need to go through it with superior officers.” O’Hanlon’s client, Roblette Baker, claims that Hulmes and Officer Harry Wenger entered her home to search for drugs without probable cause or a warrant. He now plans on using Hulmes’ 2011 testimony, and Judge Lynn’s ruling, in his case. “It’s always said to be a couple of rogue officers, a few bad apples, but it seems to be a lot more than that,” says O’Hanlon. “The Philadelphia District Attorney knows that they’re putting on allegedly corrupt police officers. Or at the very least, they should know.” (daniel.denvir@citypaper.net)
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closed fear in judges like Rau who dared to cross her and question police. In 2008, attorney David Webber wrote a letter to the editor of the Inquirer, calling for Rau’s acquittal of Tapia to be respected — and delivered a succinct lesson in the ideals of American criminal law. “The defendant may actually have committed the crime, but he goes free because the prosecutor’s evidence was simply not adequate to convict. In a police state, such an outcome is unthinkable. The war on drugs no doubt moves us closer every day to having a police state, but Rau’s ruling means that we are not there yet.” Richard Long, executive director of the Pennsylvania District Attorneys Association, in a recent interview said that he doesn’t “subscribe to the theory that judges are necessarily more deferential to police testimony.” But he quickly added that judges and juries are right to “look at the fact that a police officer is someone who has taken an oath to protect society. So that puts them in a bit of a different position than a lay person off the street.” It is an oath, however, that is sometimes violated. Allegations of theft and fabrication of evidence aren’t rare amongst Philadelphia narcotics officers. One year after Rau acquitted Tapia of drug charges in 2008, Officer Thomas Tolstoy’s narcotics squad was accused of robbing immigrant bodegas and falsifying evidence in the Daily News’ Pulitzer Prize-winning “Tainted Justice” investigation. Tolstoy, the officer who allegedly stopped Tapia, was also accused of sexual assault by three women. For hotly disputed reasons, federal prosecutors never brought charges. The DA is still deciding whether to prosecute Tolstoy on sexual-assault charges. Judges are constrained by ethics rules from speaking publicly about particular rulings
and so rarely grant interviews. Rau declined to speak to City Paper for this article.
riticism of judges who are perceived as too liberal has been frequent in a city where crime is a major concern. In 1973, Mayor Frank Rizzo, the swaggering former police commissioner and embodiment of law-and-order urban conservatism, publicly criticized a number of what he said were too-lenient judges. He called one, Judge Lisa Richette, “Let ’em Loose Lisa.” In 1985, a Philadelphia Common Pleas Court judge was reassigned to civil court after thenDistrict Attorney (and later Mayor and Gov.) Ed Rendell called his decision to dismiss charges against four murder suspects, reportedly because a prosecutor had to be in another courtroom, “sheer lunacy.” Such criticisms can stick. Sometimes, perhaps, they are accurate. But they can also threaten the judiciary’s independence, says Pennsylvanians for Modern Courts Executive Director Lynn Marks. It is OK to criticize, but “that’s different from an overall demonizing of a particular judge,” says Marks. “It’s very important that we don’t threaten the actual or perceived independence of judges.” In 1997, Abraham made national headlines when she helped block President Bill Clinton’s nomination of Common Pleas Judge Frederica Massiah-Jackson to the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. She would have been that court’s first black woman jurist. Abraham criticized Massiah-Jackson for being lenient with defendants, hostile to police and callous toward victims. Much to the consternation of Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, the former Philadelphia DA who had sponsored her nomination, Senate Republicans ran with the attack.
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Shanin Specter, a law partner at Kline & Specter, recalls that his father “was very surprised” at Abraham’s opposition since he “had called Lynne Abraham before he recommended her to the president” and she “had expressed support for Judge Massiah-Jackson — and then she changed her mind.” Abraham declined a City Paper interview request. Shanin Specter says the criticisms of Massiah-Jackson were “garbage” exploited by national Republicans eager to bludgeon Clinton. Many, particularly in the black community, found Abraham’s attack on Massiah-Jackson infuriating. Abraham was undeterred. In 2000, the DA condemned Judge Gary S. Glazer for sending a message that “you can get a free shooting in Philadelphia” continued on page 14
HE FUMED: Philly police officer Perry Betts was not happy when Judge Lisa Rau apparently didn’t believe his testimony. “I was just very surprised that a person with a kilo and a loaded .45 would be let go,” he is reported to have said at the time.
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HARDLINE: Former District Attorney Lynne Abraham, shown in this file photo, railed against judges she thought were too lenient. Gwen Shaffer
after he sentenced a teen to house arrest for shooting a Bartram High School assistant principal. Abraham could always rely on the media to relay her attacks. And sometimes, the media launched its own. In 1998, Daily News columnist Dan Geringer wrote one of a number of columns criticizing judges he believed were too lenient, calling Judge Carolyn E.Temin the “Queen of Murder Lite” for handing out what he called light sentences in two killings. City Councilman Jim Kenney, who believed that Temin had given short sentences to teens who had killed one of his relatives, told Geringer that one day the judge might have an unhappy run-in with one of the “characters she keeps putting back out on the street.” Supporters protested that Geringer had taken a select number of the judges’ cases out of context. Contacted recently by City Paper, Geringer said he thought the columns were accurate. “I felt, and the victims’ families felt, that judicial leniency was clearly a problem in those cases,” he said. District Attorney Seth Williams, who took office in 2010, has not made a practice of criticizing judges in public, and Long, of the District Attorneys Association, says 14 | P h i l a d e l p h i a C i t y Pa p e r |
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he doesn’t think prosecutors have made a habit of “speaking out against judges whose decisions they disagree with. I don’t think it happens that frequently.” But judges often get a pass when it comes to taking questionable police at their word.Take Judge Patrick Dugan, who enraged many in 2013 when he acquitted Lt. Jonathan Josey, videotaped in 2012 appearing to punch a woman in the face after the Puerto Rican Day Parade. Despite the video, Josey claimed that he was trying to knock a beer bottle from the woman’s hand. It was later revealed that Dugan’s wife is a police officer, and reportedly attended Josey’s hearing alongside a large crowd of Josey’s police supporters. Experts in legal ethics have said that Dugan should have recused himself.
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au was perhaps destined to anger cops and prosecutors. She previously worked as a civil rights and public interest attorney and is married to prominent civil rights lawyer Lawrence Krasner, who frequently represents people who claim to have been abused or set up by police. But when Abraham targeted Judge Rau, it initially seemed that the DA had overreached. Supporters rallied to Rau’s defense, and Philadelphia Bar Association Chancellor
Allan H. Gordon wrote an open letter of protest. “Further public outcries are inappropriate” and contrary to “fairness,” he wrote. “Neither the justice system generally, nor the judiciary particularly, are well served by repeated efforts to ‘embarrass’ judges publicly.” Common Pleas Court judges retained a lawyer to look into filing a complaint against the DA The judges decided against the complaint after meeting with Abraham; their reasons, due to a confidentiality agreement, remain unclear. But Rau was soon thereafter transferred from the criminal bench to handle civil cases — far from the narcotics and violentcrime cases that the DA prioritizes winning. Administrative Judge James J. Fitzgerald 3rd, who authorized Rau’s transfer, denied that it was politically motivated. But many believed it was punishment for running afoul of Abraham. “One can only hope that the transfer of Judge Rau was not forced by the district attorney and that our judges continue to act like judges and not prosecutors,” wrote David Rudovsky, a civil rights lawyer and Rau’s former law partner, in a 2003 letter to the Inquirer. He warned that great injustices can occur when judges fail to question the credibility of corrupt police officers. He pointed to the 39th District scandal, which resulted in five officers being convicted in 1995 of planting drug evidence, beating and stealing from civilians and lying in court. “It is telling that the officers who lied later admitted that they did so with the assurance that prosecutors and judges would rarely disbelieve their testimony,” he wrote.
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estifying before Judge Rau, Hector Tapia insisted that he was not at the Frankford Avenue house to deal drugs. He was a barber, owned a barber shop and made weekly visits to that house to cut the occupant’s hair. And though Tapia was licensed to carry his firearm, Assistant District Attorney Jennifer Hoffman was not persuaded. “Is the barbering business a dangerous business?” she asked Tapia at trial. “So why would you feel the need to carry around a firearm that night when going to this man’s house?” “I always carry my firearm,” Tapia responded. “I’m in North Philly.” continued on page 16
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Last Wednesday, Officer Perry Betts joined five fellow Philadelphia Police officers in the federal courthouse at Sixth and Market streets in handcuffs. Tapia claimed that he tried to show police his gun license, and that they tore it up. He also alleged other problems with the officer’s account. For one, he said that he had $1,650 on his person that night — not the $1,300 the police said they recovered. Someone had seemingly made $350 disappear. There was also Officer Betts’ account that he had observed Tapia at the doorway from 40 or 50 feet away, down a long and narrow alley. It was nighttime, and he could not recall whether there was any lighting. Sciolla, Tapia’s attorney, presented photos taken from various angles: He said it would have been very difficult, if not impossible, to see the door from the street. Hoffman countered that Betts was “a trained officer. He is trained to see at night.” Judge Rau then asked the prosecutor why Tapia “would be arrested leaving the house with the same cocaine he was supposedly just to have sold to them.” “I didn’t say that he just sold it to them,” Hoffman responded. “So,” Rau asked, “they were just hanging out?” “Whether they were cutting it up that night, whether they were going to set up a bigger deal later, that is information that we don’t know and can’t speculate to because
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[no police were] inside the house to tell us what happened inside the house,” Hoffman answered. Sciolla alleged that officers had fabricated seizing the cocaine from Tapia on the street because they otherwise did not have any evidence to obtain a warrant to search the home. “Here’s the story,” said Sciolla. “Wait until they come back out. We’ll stop him. I’ll point a guy out to you. You’ll say that kilo was in his possession. Then we’ll take him back inside and see what else we can find.” Police claimed to have found no drugs inside the house. But they did find strainers, straws, empty bottle of lidocaine — materials used to package cocaine. In a strange twist, they admitted that they did not conduct a thorough search of the house. But Betts did, Tapia said, take him and the man who lived at the home to the basement to privately speak to them. Charges against the three other men were dropped for reasons unstated at trial. Sciolla suggested that police had made the home’s resident an informant. While Tapia and the home’s occupant did not have a criminal record, one of the other men arrested had been found guilty of possession with intent to deliver and carrying a firearm without a license in 2005, drug
charges in 2007 and pleaded guilty to another drug-distribution charge stemming from a 2010 arrest. Another had pleaded guilty to aggravated assault in 2003. In October 2006, he was arrested and later found guilty of murder. Why did they arrest Tapia? “Because [the man who lives at the home] is in play,” Sciolla said. “[Tapia’s] not in play. They could throw him away. He’s not going to help them because he doesn’t know anything about the drug trade, so let’s put it on him. Let’s choose a lamb and let’s slaughter this one.” Assistant DA Hoffman insisted that the officers were “just telling you what they did in their day-to-day job, which is what they are here to do, and we’re glad that they’re here to take people like him off the street who are delivering kilos of cocaine into our neighborhoods. “What does [Betts] have to gain by coming in here and lying and pinning something on Mr. Tapia?” she asked. “Absolutely nothing except losing his job if it’s found out that he does that.” ast Wednesday, Officer Perry Betts joined five fellow Philadelphia Police officers in the federal courthouse at Sixth and Market streets in handcuffs and in the custody of U.S. Marshals. Betts, wearing khaki shorts and a T-shirt, sat glumly in a jury box bereft of jurors as he watched a U.S. magistrate judge read a laundry list of indictments to the narcotics squad members. Betts, Michael Spicer, who was Betts’ partner at the time of Tapia’s arrest, and Officers Thomas Liciardello, Linwood Norman, Brian Reynolds and John Speiser were accused by a federal grand jury of being part of a “criminal organization” that illicitly raised funds through “robbery, extortion, kidnapping, and drug dealing.” Over six years, the officers allegedly pulled over suspected drug dealers and entered their homes to rob them of drugs and money, and used violence or the threat of violence against them to procure money. In one 2007 case, Betts and other officers allegedly dragged a man into his City Line Avenue apartment. The alleged ordeal, in which officers beat and threateningly leaned him over an 18th-story balcony, ended with the theft of $8,000 in personal items. Other
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that these officers were lying, but that the District Attorney’s Office had long refused to look into the allegations of some of the city’s most “prolific officers” — frequent witnesses for the prosecution. He also complained that too many judges went along for the ride. Krasner and others are bringing dozens of civil rights cases against the officers in federal court. It could mushroom into hundreds. The officers are being represented in the civil cases by attorneys from Archer & Greiner, a Philadelphia firm that touts its experience defending police against claims of civil rights abuses. Lynne Abraham, a partner at the firm, is one of their top attorneys in that field. Archer & Greiner did not respond to a request for comment.
still JAILED: Judge Lisa Rau uncovered another case of alleged police misconduct and granted a new trial to Jose Medina Jr. His case is now before the state Supreme Court.
alleged thefts involved much larger sums. On Monday, federal magistrates allowed all but Liciardello and Spicer to be freed on bail as lawyers for the six officers mounted a defense of their clients. The lawyers said that police supervisors and other law-enforcement agencies were present when some of the raids took place, and questioned the motives of those who had testified before the grand jury. Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey transferred Betts and other officers out of narcotics in 2012 after District Attorney Seth Williams wrote a letter informing Ramsey that he would no longer call them to testify in drug trials. The officers — the subject of a wave of federal lawsuits and Internal Affairs complaints alleging excessive force, false arrest and filing fraudulent reports — were not credible. But Williams only made that decision after civil rights attorney Krasner — Rau’s husband — accused narcotics officers of misconduct, prompting Municipal Court Judge Charles Hayden to order police and the DA to turn over records on 11 officers. And the District Attorney’s office, as City Paper reports this week, continues to call narcotics Officer Christopher Hulmes to testify, even though he admitted in 2011 to lying on a search warrant affidavit and in open court. Walking out of federal court after the officers’ arraignment, Krasner noted that defense attorneys had complained for years
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n 2008, Rau briefly returned to the criminal bench after her exile in civil court. Police misconduct quickly became an issue once again when she presided over the case of Joel Aponte. Aponte, shot twice in a 2007 encounter with police, was charged with aggravated assault after he allegedly pointed a gun at police. But Francis Carmen, a public defender who represented Aponte, alleged that his client was unarmed and police had shot him when he ran away. Carmen doubted the story told by narcotics Officer Scott Schweizer. For one, Aponte was shot in the back of the leg and the bottom of the foot. And it had been previously discovered that Schweizer had a Ku Klux Klan poster on his locker (Schweizer said that another officer had placed it there). He had also been found by Internal Affairs to have lied on a police report. Rau granted Carmen’s motion to allow the poster and portions of Schweizer’s Internal Affairs files to be admitted into evidence. The jury acquitted Aponte, but Carmen thinks he might have been convicted if not for Rau’s ruling to admit the damning material about the officer. “Judges have repeatedly and repeatedly disallowed for that to happen,” Carmen said. “And Judge Rau got it right. … This is an officer who’s been disciplined for lying in the past.” In 2011, Rau uncovered another case of alleged police misconduct when she granted a new trial to Jose Medina Jr., now 45, of Reading. In 1992, Medina was convicted of stabbing William Bogan to death on a
Fairhill street and sentenced to life in prison without parole. Two young brothers, Michael and Hector Toro, testified that they had witnessed Medina, drunk and brandishing a knife in a Chinese takeout spot, announce that he planned to kill someone. Michael, 12 at the time of the trial, vacillated between claiming that he had witnessed the stabbing, and that only his brother had. He said that he had seen the murder from inside a house, or maybe outside; that Medina had gone through Bogan’s pockets after the stabbing, and that he didn’t. And so on. More than a decade later, both brothers signed affidavits claiming that a detective had threatened to remove them from their grandmother’s home and place them in a juvenile facility or foster care if they did not testify. In 2006, Medina filed a Post Conviction Relief Act petition seeking a new trial. Rau granted him one. Rau said that the “tragedy [of Bogan’s death] was compounded when, in the middle of the night, a detective lacking any other evidence against Jose Medina took two young boys, already terrified after a murder in their neighborhood, coerced them and convinced at least one of them to provide false testimony against another man for a murder. Hector Toro was sentenced to a lifetime of guilt as Jose Medina serves a life sentence based on a trial that lacked the fairness that our system of justice has promised and demands.” After a brief stint back in criminal court, Rau returned to the civil bench in 2010.It’s no one’s idea of a boring career move. She has overseen high-profile libel cases involving electricians union leader John Dougherty, powerhouse lawyer Dick Sprague and former Philadelphia Housing Authority director Carl Greene. But the impact of Rau’s criminal rulings continue to reverberate. In May, the Pennsylvania Superior Court upheld Rau’s ruling granting Medina a new trial, and the case is pending before the state Supreme Court. Medina’s lawyer, Norman Orville Scott, wonders how many times his client has to win his case to finally walk out of prison. “There’s sort of an institutional investment in a conviction,” said Scott. “It is very rare that you will find a judge who will question the credibility of a police officer.” (daniel.denvir@citypaper.net)
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Arts Continuing Education Adds Shorter Classes to Fall Lineup New this fall, University of the Arts Continuing Education is adding more short workshops and classes, new Artful Living courses, plus a DIY Holiday Series. The University of the Arts Continuing Education fall semester begins Sept. 29, but there are courses and workshop starting throughout October and November, as well. Short courses include Digital Camera Overview, Botanical Illustration, iPhone Photography, Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, Design Your Own Knitting Patterns, The Psychology of Color and Adobe Photoshop, as well as a Drawing Workshop Series. We’re also introducing a DIY Holiday Series including, Greeting Card Design, Building Terrariums and Design Your Own Wrapping Paper. Bring your imagination, your inventiveness and even a few friends, and see what happens. UArts offers certificate programs for the Teaching Artist, Social Media Marketing, Web Design, Digital Photography and Communication Design, as well as courses in visual arts, crafts, design, technology, dance, music and writing. For more information, call 215-717-6095, visit cs.uarts.edu/ce or email ce@uarts.edu.
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a&e
artsmusicmoviesmayhem
curtaincall By David Anthony Fox
B U C K S C O U N T Y P L AY H O U S E
WELCOME HOME
➤ HOORAY FOR HOMECOMINGS. Christopher Durang’s Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, a sweet-sad comic riff on Anton Chekhov, is now on stage at Bucks County Playhouse, just a few miles from Princeton, where the play had its premiere in 2012. It’s also a homecoming for Durang himself, a longtime local resident, who is — for the first (and perhaps only) time — now starring in his own play. It’s a major coup for the Playhouse. This was my third Vanya — I saw the original production at McCarter, and another at the Philadelphia Theatre Company. I admit to some mixed feelings about the piece. Durang’s complex mix of styles here — farce, sentiment, absurdity and more — doesn’t completely cohere, and I miss the more corrosive humor for which he’s better known. But I understand why the softer contours and gentler charm of Vanya have made it such a crowdpleaser. And in many ways, this production makes the best case I’ve seen yet for Durang’s script. Some of this is due to director Sheryl Kaller, who pitches the tone at a midpoint, effectively making it a boulevard comedy tinged with something darker. There’s also much to enjoy in the acting ensemble, including Marilu Henner and Deirdre Madigan. But it’s Durang himself who is the revelation. He is perfectly cast as the befuddled, loveable-but-with-anedge Vanya, and it’s a joy to hear him navigate his own comic cadences so masterfully. In producing Vanya, Bucks County Playhouse has pulled off something genuinely unique. Here is a current favorite play, staged in absolutely the right place (it’s set in Bucks County), and starring its author, whose individual performance is something to treasure. (d_fox@citypaper.net) ✚ Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, $25-$75, through Aug.10, Bucks County Playhouse, 70 S. Main St., New Hope, Pa., 215-862-2121, bcptheater.org. 22 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |
PLAY STRONG: DJ Sega will play the Mad Decent Block Party Afterparty at Union Transfer on Friday. NEAL SANTOS
[ dance/electronic ]
808S AND HEARTBREAK DJ Sega on real life and the religion of the dancefloor. By A.D. Amorosi hey’ve got fingers faster than turntables and the ability to make a dance floor leap with the flick of a finger on a laptop, but DJs aren’t superheroes. DJ Sega knows it. The internationally known and locally cherished spinner, artist and producer, Philly’s Robert Taylor Jr., felt all too human when he put out the word this spring that he and his family needed help. After nearly 10 years of caring for his physically disabled mother and uncle, the city of Philadelphia had condemned the Taylor family house in West Philly. Sega had to move their belongings overnight. “I became DJ Sega in that house, and I’m on my 10th anniversary of being that character, but taking care of my family comes first,” says the DJ, 27, while en route to Baltimore for a gig. “I got to hold my head up and keep moving.” Real life isn’t something you hear much about from those who make clubs tracks their living. They’ve got images to maintain as 24-hour party people. But all that frivolity is small in comparison to the drudgery of the everyday. Sega’s self-titled “Philly Club” style offers a way out. His dance
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music — singles like “Ghetto Hokey Pokey,” his Sixer Series volumes, his Angels and Demonz EP and his new HollaSonix Collection — has real soul, and shows off a human element few artists in the dance business possess. “Most mixers and producers are working with a blueprint,” says Sega. “But the human element in my music? I’m glad you asked. I don’t want to get all mystical here, but I think my music is about struggle, is about soul, is about that which you cannot see.” Sega’s not just talking about the problems he’s having taking care of his mom and his uncle. They’re currently living in a hotel, while he moves from place-to-place until their legal woes are settled. His troubles started much earlier, at Philly’s Martin Luther King High School (“the worst in the city, but I got through it”), his father’s addiction problems and the loss of his grandmother. Just last month, his pal Diplo sent and then deleted a tweet that basically called Sega a bum (without naming names). “He drew first blood with that, but I don’t have time for drama. See, all the energy that you have that makes you want to hit somebody — not anger, just feeeeeelings — is what I put into each track. It’s a spiritual thing too, because when you channel that emotion into music, you can call that God, you can call it magic or you can call it soul.” (Anyway, the blood can’t be too bad, since Sega’s playing Diplo’s
“I got to hold my head up and keep moving.”
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[ between profundity and puffery ] They Want My Soul (Loma Vista) kicks off with Stonesy strut, which is refreshing and anomalous since the remaining 35 minutes are as inimitably, unrelentingly Spoony as Spoon can be. They tick all the band’s paradoxical boxes — tidy grit, substantial stylishness, effortless propulsion, layered minimalism, dispassionate rocking-out (in spots, the hardest they have in ages) — all of which is a thrill following a four-year hiatus. It breaks approximately zero new ground.Spoon doesn’t have to bend; the universe bends to Spoon. —K. Ross Hoffman
➤ taylor mcferrin | B+ His music is subtler and less playful than his father’s, but it’s just as colorful, idiosyncratic and inventive, casually blurring the lines between jazz, R&B, hip-hop and electronica. On his long-gestating debut, Early Riser (Brainfeeder), he handles almost every instrument, and coordinates a diverse but simpatico cast of collaborators, but its most impressive feat is how impossibly warm, fluid and —K. Ross Hoffman organic it feels despite all that legwork.
Annette Monnier on visual art
Polished and pristine as a SoCal sunset, The Voyager (Warner) does double duty as one of the summer’s breeziest, most easy-pleasing pop records and one of its subtlest, wryest heartbreakers. Lewis passes over roots and country (to say nothing of “indie”) in favor of a luxuriously crafted ’70s L.A. soft-rock throwback (hey there, Haim) — that’s all achingly sunny melody and smarting narratives of romantic regret and nagging displacement. —K. Ross Hoffman
➤ shabazz palaces | ALese Majesty (Sub Pop) achieves its
sense of foreboding by muddling the vocals and dismembering the rhythms. It’s strange, but subdued as it takes aim — from a phantasmagoria of mothership motherboard sound and ambient texture — at the selfie kids and the powers that be. Says Ishmael Butler of his intentions: “Utter relaxation and tension, confusion and certainty, joy and also feeling close to the timbres of anguish and pain; history, futurism; but everything is an attempt to expand the now.” You decide where between profundity and puffery that lies. —Dotun Akintoye
[ movie review ]
CALVARY [ B ] SHARING A PINT with the Brothers McDonagh must lead to some weighty conver-
sations if their films are any indication. Martin McDonagh made the leap from stage to screen with a pair of blacker-than-pitch comedies (In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths), while older brother John Michael McDonagh launched his directorial career with the Bad Lieutenant-with-a-brogue comedy The Guard. The elder McDonagh reteams with star Brendan Gleeson for Calvary, where the laughs come with an almost overpoweringly bitter aftertaste as the writer-director tackles the ponderous dilemma of Catholic guilt. The film begins in the confession booth, where Father James Lavelle is confronted by a victim of childhood sexual abuse who declares his intention to kill Lavelle a week later, as murdering a good priest would make a stronger statement than vindictively killing a bad one. Lavelle spends the next several days attending to his parishioners as he grapples with how to deal with his impending doom. Like Gleeson’s character in The Guard, a drug- and booze-addled cop who ultimately does the right thing, Father Lavelle is a deeply flawed character with good intentions. He’s accepting of his wayward flock even as he grows bitterly angry at their resistance to his ministrations. Like brother Martin’s sophomore effort, McDonagh takes a curious turn for the meta with Calvary. Lavelle continually discusses himself and his fellow townspeople as if they’re characters in a film, referring to the reciting of lines and the playing of roles. Where Seven Psychopaths made its layering of reality and fiction an intrinsic part of the film, in Calvary it feels far more artificial, just one more way for its characters to distance themselves from authenticity as the story trods on into unrepentant nihilism. —Shaun Brady
The ponderous dilemma of Catholic guilt.
KEEPING THE FAITH: Father James Lavelle (Brendan Gleeson) braces himself for an attempt on his life while caring for his parish in an Irish fishing village.
CONNECT THE DOTS SLOUGHT
➤ spoon | B+
flickpick
re:view
➤ jenny lewis | B+
[ album reviews ]
➤ WHAT GOOD IS a braille word that one can
only read from a plane? You might just as well ask what good is vacant land that no one can legally use? “Turf tagging” is an exhibition of prototype models created by the artist David Stephens. These models present ideas for potential sculptures that could occupy some of the approximately 40,000 vacant lots in the city of Philadelphia. The show, if heavy on concept, is light on finished artworks. What is on view at the Slought Foundation is a puzzling array of large wooden structures — those structures can be combined with a tool to create circular mounds of earth that reach 5 feet in diameter and 2-and-a-half feet tall. What are the mounds? They are earth-worked giant braille dots and if the project were completed, the dots would spell out the word “acknowledge.” It’s a strange, thought-provoking experiment — taking a communication device and rendering it nearly useless by increasing its scale to such a degree. But in a city with so many unused, ignored space, perhaps the acknowledgment is the key. Though the end product would be a braille word, to a passerby the work would simply look like an atypical garden with strange raised mounds of earth covered in plants. If realized, the project would be a green, ephemeral outdoor structure that could be seamlessly landscaped into almost any lot — but there are currently no plans to install the work. Stephens, now 72, was declared legally blind in 1979. “Turf tagging” follows on the heels of a showing of his more traditional stand-alone sculptures at the Center for Art in Wood earlier this year. (annette.monnier@citypaper.net) ✚ “Turf tagging,” on view through August, Slought Foundation, 4017 Walnut St., 215-701-4627, slought.org.
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FIRSTPLACE Investigative Reporting // Ryan Briggs
BEST in PA
News Series // Daniel Denvir Feature Beat Reporting // Emily Guendelsberger
B I G W E E K LY
Photo Story // Neal Santos Sports Photo // Neal Santos Front Page Design // Reseca Peskin Page Design // Reseca Peskin General News // Daniel Denvir Ongoing News Coverage // Daniel Denvir // Samantha Melamed Feature Story // Ryan Briggs News Feature Story // Daniel Denvir Graphic/Photo Illustration // Evan M. Lopez // Emily Guendelsberger // Jess Bergman News Beat Reporting // Samantha Melamed
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fresh content from our award-winning staff
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✚ 808s and Heartbreak
[ arts & entertainment ]
<<< continued from page 22
“You can call that God, you can call it magic or you can call it soul.” Mad Decent Block Party’s after-party on Friday.) Whether it comes from his churchy upbringing and deep spiritual roots in his community or from the sonic vibe of a rich range of influences, soul is the biggest part of Sega’s deep, bass-heavy “Philly Club” sound, a brand name he coined to differentiate himself from the brassy “Baltimore Club” sound and the commercial “Jersey Club” sound. “It’s all club,” he says with a laugh. “Making the music is escape, tuning my environment inside-out to produce tracks — that’s what gives me my energy.” Everything that you hear from Sega, every original track or remix, there’s a story behind it. Take “Runaway,” Sega’s Kanye West Philly Club remix. “I was going through problems with a girlfriend where she thought I was a player — and I’m not a player in the game, I am the game — it coincided with what was going on with Kanye’s song.” With lyrics about “having me a good girl/ And still be addicted to them hood-rats,” Sega wrapped the feelings he was having about his troubled relationship (“man, I wanted her to run away,”) and created a remix with the same power and passion
West had in his track. This is what Sega does. For his new mixtapes/EP series, the HollaSonix Collection — “Don’t slip and call it Hollertronix or you’ll have lawyers on your ass,” he says, recalling the Diplo parties where Sega once spun — Sega is returning to the sound that made him famous: a metal/ punk mix that’s hotter than hell in his mind. “I know the secret no black man is supposed to know, that heavy metal is the sound of those whose souls are wandering the earth.” Sometimes superheroes use their power for evil, and soul moves in mysterious ways. (a_amorosi@citypaper.net) ✚ Mad Decent Block Party, Fri., Aug. 8, 3 p.m., $40, Festival Pier, 121 N. Columbus Blvd., maddecentblockparty.com; Mad Decent Block Party Afterparty with Mad Decent All Stars, Fri., Aug. 8, 10 p.m., $25, Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St., 215-232-2100, utphilly.com.
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movie
shorts
FILMS ARE GRADED BY CITY PAPER CRITICS A-F.
Mood Indigo
✚ NEW CALVARY | B See Shaun Brady’s review on p. 23. (Ritz Five)
MOOD INDIGO | C+ By the time Michel Gondry’s director credit appears at the beginning of Mood Indigo, viewers may already feel like they’ve binge-watched a season’s worth of Pee-wee’s Playhouse while listening to every track on a Duke Ellington box set. The whimsy is unrelenting in Gondry’s adaptation of Boris Vian’s novel L’Écume des jours, and while the director’s prodigious visual imagination can lead to some delightful surprises, the accumulation here is akin to a cocaine-force sugar rush. There’s less plot than in your average fairy tale: Independently wealthy Colin (Romain Duris) meets and instantly falls in love with Chloé (Audrey Tatou), but their gleeful romance is interrupted when she falls ill. Gondry crams the empty spaces around that meager story with inventive confections, blending the retrofuturism of Brazil with the gamine preciousness of Amélie, mixed with equal parts Rube Goldberg and Tex 26 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |
Avery and handcrafted with an Etsy sensibility. The couple is surrounded by a gaggle of eccentrics — Colin’s stylish manservant (Omar Sy), a friend obsessed with a burlesqued-Sartre philosopher (Gad Elmaleh), even a mouse played by a man in a mouse suit — and in their presence there’s no such thing as an inanimate object. The crush of madcap trifles becomes so overwhelming that its residue masks the tonal shift when Chloé’s disease begins to blanch the film of color and life, accompanying the final moments with a sigh of exhausted relief rather than a moan of grief. —Shaun Brady (Ritz at the Bourse)
WHAT IF | B+ Michael Dowse’s latest doesn’t quite do for rom-coms what his awesomely vulgar Goon did for the numskull sports movie — that is, prove that a script with hundreds of F-bombs and menstruation jokes can also be oddly heartfelt. But the twinkly back-and-forth between What If ’s two leads, seasoned with just the right amount of creative-class whimsy, softens the built-in barriers of the genre. Sad-sack med-school dropout Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe) drags through dayto-day life in Toronto, directionless since
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breaking up with his disloyal ex. Then he meets Chantry (Zoe Kazan), a quirky animator with compatible senses of curiosity and humor — perfect for him, but committed to longtime boyfriend Ben (Rafe Spall), who, of course, is a dick. The When Harry Met Sally school of platonic gender relations is cited early and often, with all the expected “will they?” moments and advice-bestowing besties (Adam Driver as his zany pal; Megan Park as her desperate sister) opining while browsing tchotchke shops and plodding down sidewalks. But even though the bones aren’t fresh, the spirit and sentiment is. Radcliffe nails the malaise of the rudderless urban twentysomething with detail and dimension, while Kazan, who needs to be a bigger star, is the saving-grace acquaintance we all want to make at the stuffy cocktail party. The tension when they’re together is as intellectual as it is sexual, and that makes it damn believable. —Drew Lazor (Ritz East)
✚ CONTINUING BOYHOOD | A With Boyhood, director Richard Linklater proves himself to to be an
insightful chronicler of the changes wrought by time on a relationship as he shows one young boy’s growth and maturation over the course of nearly three hours. Linklater’s unconventional approach — filming a short segment each year for 12 years — has been wellpublicized, but in practice it never feels like a gimmick. The focus is on Mason (Ellar Coltrane), who is introduced as a 6-year-old pondering the heavens to a Coldplay soundtrack and exits as an 18-year-old college freshman. His round, chubby face takes on angular definition and his inquisitive boyishness sharpens into an actual personality. But we watch his family age and grow as well. His older sister Samantha, played by the director’s daughter Lorelei, goes from teasing annoyance to jaded teenager to thoughtful young woman. Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke appear as Mason’s divorced parents, who reluctantly settle into maturity, their lessdramatic physical changes showing the burdens and wear of time. As we check in on their progress, what we see are not necessarily the most dramatic moments; crucial events unfold offscreen and banalties accumulate. If nothing in Mason’s experience is particularly novel, it’s stunning to watch how the
same truths become new discoveries in each person’s life. —SB (Ritz Five)
GET ON UP | BYears from now, there’s a good chance we’ll talk about Chadwick Boseman’s James Brown the same way we discuss one of Robert Downey Jr.’s most memorable parts in passing: Hey, didn’t Iron Man play Charlie Chaplin one time? In other words, a meaty biographical role will eventually outgrow its vessel and stand alone as a feather-in-cap point in a superstar’s career. Boseman hasn’t reached the S-word echelon yet, but he has everything — looks, charisma, tangible talent — to indicate it will happen, his take on the Godfather of Soul transcending the strain surrounding it. Opening with the elderly Brown rushing his office with a shotgun, then leaping back decades to a harrowing plane ride over violent Vietnamese airspace, it’s clear early on that director Tate Taylor (The Help) has chosen to avoid the boring front-to-back storytelling that so often slows down biopics. The chronological hopscotch slides between Brown’s messed-up backwoods childhood, his ’50s origins, ’60s heyday and ’70s reinvention with ankle-shimmying style, keeping Boseman physically
and creatively engaged. But there are still far too many clichéd music-movie contrivances — drugs, drama, infighting, Brown leaning on a sink in deep emotional pain (fave!) — for the flower to blossom fully. Taylor’s decision to have Boseman erratically turn to the camera as a half-invested narrator is a particularly bad choice that tamps down his star’s swagger. —DL (Wide release)
MAGIC IN THE MOONLIGHT | C+ Woody Allen’s movies come along with the inevitability of allergy season: Some years there’s a beautiful bouquet, and others you’re left bleary-eyed and fuzzy-headed. Magic in the Moonlight isn’t Woody Allen’s worst movie — not by a long shot. But it’s one of his least necessary, the kind that could be wiped from the world’s hard drives without anyone raising much of a stink. Disappearing, as it turns out, is a speciality of Stanley (Colin Firth), a magician who beguiles audiences in between-the-wars Europe with his tricks under the guise of the “Oriental” conjurer Wei Ling Soo. Despite the deception inherent in his profession, Stanley is obsessed with unmasking the deceptions of others, especially spiritualists like the American Sophie (Emma Stone), who’s entranced a British dowager (Jacki Weaver) by conveying messages from her late husband. Despite half-hearted attempts to keep his identity secret, Stanley is openly contemptuous of Sophie’s purported abilities, so much so that Allen practically forces us to take her side. Sophie may be a con artist, but she brings people joy, whereas Stanley is a perpetual sourpuss. At some point, it becomes clear that Magic in the Moonlight is meant to be a romance, despite the evident lack of chemistry between its stars and the fact that Stanley’s behavior merits nothing so much as a swift kick in the balls. Firth finds the character’s sympathetic corners, especially when Allen suggests that his antipathy to those who claim a connection to the unseen world is rooted in a deep desire to believe — he’s like the Fox Mulder of faux-Asian stage magicians. But at its core, the movie seems to think that a man treating a woman with cruelty and disdain is reason enough to fall for him, which would be revolting if it were put forth with any conviction. —Sam Adams (Ritz Five) A MOST WANTED MAN | AAnton Corbijn’s moody Le Carré adaptation gains inevitable, and almost unbearable, poignancy from featuring one of Philip Seymour Hoffman’s final performances. (All that remains is Mockingjay, although he died before its
[ movie shorts ]
completion.) But had he never played a role other than Günther Bachmann, he would still have been one of his generation’s greatest actors. Günther, whom Hoffman plays with a heavy German accent and a heavier weight on his shoulders, is the head of a secret German intelligence unit that operates in the moral and legal netherworld. Although A Most Wanted Man is set in the present — or at least emphatically post-9/11; echoes of the Hamburg cell are everywhere — Corbijn strands the film in a gray nowhere, the better to depict a landscape that no one, least of all Günther, knows how to navigate. The plot, which involves tracking down a Chechen militant who may have trained with Islamic terrorists, is relatively low stakes by espionagethriller standards, but that’s entirely to the point: What changes there are to be made will be small, and even those will come at a cost. The drama is about personal integrity and trust, not ticking bombs and rogue nukes. Though there’s not a shot fired or a body dumped, it’s still thrilling, because Günther’s struggle is never farther away than Hoffman’s magnificently worn face. —SA (Ritz East)
✚ SPECIAL SCREENINGS INTERNATIONAL HOUSE 3701 Chestnut St., 215-387-5125, ihousephilly.org. Cannibal Carnage!: Exhumed Films screens two gory movies that kick-started the cannibal subgenre. Thu., Aug. 7, 7 p.m., $15. The Warriors (1979, U.S., 92 min.): Set in a futuristic New York ruled by gangs, this pulp movie allegedly incited violence at the theaters where it was first screened. Fri., Aug. 8, 8 p.m., $9. Three Colors: White (1994, France/Poland, 91 min.): A Polish hairdresser plots his revenge after his French wife divorces him because of his impotency. Sat., Aug. 9, 7 p.m., $9. Good Bye Dragon Inn (2003, Taiwan, 82 min.): An experimental tribute to Taiwanese cinema and the influential director King Hu. Wed., Aug. 13, 7 p.m., $9.
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“BRENDAN GLEESON
SHINES IN POWERFUL
‘CALVARY.’” Kyle Smith, NEW YORK POST
“AN INVENTIVE WHODUNIT
WITH A PITCH -BLACK HEART.” Rodrigo Perez, INDIEWIRE
“IMMENSELY POWERFUL DRAMA, ENRICHED BY SPIKY
BLACK COMEDY.”
David Rooney, THE HOLLYWOOD REPORTER
“BRENDAN GLEESON roots his character
IN BONE-DEEP
INTEGRITY.” Justin Chang, VARIETY
“GLEESON
IN CAREER BEST TURN. IT’S AN AUTHENTIC
HEART-AND-SOUL
PERFORMANCE.” Cath Clarke, TIME OUT NEW YORK
EXCLUSIVE ENGAGEMENT
STARTS FRIDAY, AUGUST 8 C I T Y PA P E R . N E T | A U G U S T 7 - A U G U S T 1 3 , 2 0 1 4 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |
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events LISTINGS@CITYPAPER.NET | AUGUST 7 - AUGUST 13
[ he who seeks rest finds boredom ]
HEAD TO HEAD: GoKash Productions’ Death of A Salesman continues at Plays & Players Theatre through Aug. 17. KATIE BALUN
Events is our selective guide to what’s going on in the city this week. For comprehensive event listings, visit citypaper.net/events. IF YOU WANT TO BE LISTED: Submit information by email (listings@ citypaper.net) or enter it yourself at citypaper.net/submit-event with the following details: date, time, address of venue, telephone number and admission price. Incomplete submissions will not be considered, and listings information will not be accepted over the phone.
8.7 thursday [ rock/pop ]
THE ROCK*A*TEENS $12 | Thu., Aug. 7, 9 p.m., with Hound and Wailin’ Storms, Johnny Brenda’s, 1201 N. Frankford Ave., 215-739-9684, johnnybrendas.com. Atlanta, Ga.’s the Rock*A*Teens represent a generally little-remembered chapter of Merge Records (and ’90s indie rock) history, though 28 | P H I L A D E L P H I A C I T Y PA P E R |
this summer — which marks their first public activity as a band since 2002 — has somewhat improbably seen the release of not one, but two live recordings from their heyday: one a stand-alone cheekily entitled A Major Motion Picture (Chunklet), the other packaged as a bonus disc with a Merge reissue of the band’s 2000 swan song, Sweet Bird of Youth. The available evidence presents them as a hard-hitting but surprisingly versatile outfit who were both ahead of and very much of their time, trafficking in everything from Gothy rockabilly and woozy, soon-to-be-vogueish carnivalesque psych to tortuous, semi-baroque lit-rock reminiscent of Quasi and Destroyer, while predicting the raggedly earnest likes of Okkervil River (frontman Chris Lopez is a clear influence on Will Sheff) and Arcade Fire (who cut their first record for Merge four
years after the R*A*Ts cut their last). —K. Ross Hoffman
[ theater ]
DEATH OF A SALESMAN $27.50-$35 | Through Aug. 17, GoKash Productions at Plays & Players Theatre, 1714 Delancey St., gokashproductions.com. A classic succeeds with a variety of audiences, and endures beyond its time. Such is Arthur Miller’s 1949 drama, a staple of academic anthologies — though I fear that students are its worst audience, since they haven’t yet tasted the harsh life lessons that make it such a profound tragedy. GoKash Productions’ spirited revival features a largely black cast, adding a new layer without changing a word. A line like Willie’s lament about son Biff’s inability to “find himself” by age 34 resonates powerfully: “In the greatest country in the world … a young man is lost?”
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Kash Goins is a few decades too young to play the titular 63-year-old salesman, but believably reveals a man struggling to prop up both body and spirit. Eric Carter and Carlo Campbell excel as his sons, and Alicia Diane (alternating performances with Tamara Woods) as long-suffering wife Linda conveys a fierce mix of protectiveness and resignation. Director Ozzie Jones and sound designer Rox Reverendo infuse this bold, focused production with jazz underscoring that amplifies Willie’s state of mind, plus recordings of civil rights speeches that connect Willie’s hopelessness to discrimination. As Linda so famously says, “Attention must be paid.” —Mark Cofta
[ fishing ]
BASSMASTER ELITE SERIES TOURNAMENT EXPO FREE | Thu., Aug. 7-Sun., Aug. 10, Great Plaza at Penn’s Landing,
Columbus Blvd. and Chestnut St., 215-629-3200, delawareriverwaterfront.com. All right, all right. Settle down, class. If you would please open your holo-books to page TX-49e, we can begin today’s history lesso — Keanu, please spit out your gum. Thank you. As I was saying, today we will be discussing the Bassmaster Elite Series Tournament of 2014. Now, they say Big Gus was the size of a gambling boat the weekend of the tournament, when brave pro anglers and Easy Rider bassmasters from across the country descended upon the Delaware to earn their weight in bass and glory. Yes, question? Hmm. A bass was a fish. Animals that lived in freshwa — you know what? Never mind. Big Gus was a real sonuvabitch, and all the greats (Peter McLancer, Clams McBones, Skinny Ralph Jr.) couldn’t be bothered with
Thursday evening’s Jaws screening: They wanted a piece of Gus. And let me tell you, they bit off more than they could chew. That’s all for now. Class dismissed. —Marc Snitzer
8.8 friday [ punk/electronic ]
SARMUST $8 | Fri., Aug. 8, 9 p.m., The Fire, 412 E. Girard Ave., thefirephilly.com. In 2005, the family band of Bebek — keyboardist Nick Michalopoulos, operatic singing wife Lynn Michalopoulos — became a Philly-household name with its complexly swampy yet spare sound merging Middle Eastern sequenceheavy ambience with light, breezy Latin jazz (think Airto and Flora Purim), Jamaican dub and Goth-rawk. It worked
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[ r&b/dance ]
BACK2BASICS WITH KING BRITT & DOZIA $20-$25 | Fri., Aug. 8, 8:30 p.m. Hard Rock Café, 1131 Market St., 215-238-1000, hardrock.com/ cafes/philadelphia.
COURTESY OF KING BRITT
too, for one eponymously-titled CD. Too smart to stay local, the pair relocated to Washington, D.C., with kids and teaching degrees. Still, Nick has continued playing similarsounding music in Sarmust, an aggressive, Sufi-inspired, post-punk electro-fusion trio led by lyricist/singer Omar Waqar with two singles to its name, “Frozen in Embrace” and “dangerous dogma.” —A.D. Amorosi
Before he went off on the avant-garde tip and got a Pew Fellowship, even before he hit the road with hip-hop luminar-
set of subjects. The legendary Back2Basics residency at Silk City and now-closed Revival, co-founded by Britt and Dozia Blakey, helped lay seeds for Philadelphia’s now-international reputation for genremixing ecstasy. Tomorrow, they recapture that magic for the first time in almost a decade. Be a part of history repeating itself in the best way. —Sameer Rao
guy in something before, who the hell is he?” Pete Holmes is that guy at least 50 percent of the time. But between hosting TBS’s sadly canceled The Pete Holmes Show — the only late-night show that actually allowed comedian guests
two nights of eccentric jokes covering topics as disparate as the obtuseness of both Game of Thrones and museums. —Sameer Rao
8.9 saturday [ music/barbecue ]
PHILLY SUMMER FEST $10 | Sat., Aug. 9, barbecue 1:30 p.m., show 3:30 p.m., PhilaMOCA, 531 N. 12th St., 267-519-9651, philamoca.org.
[ standup ]
PETE HOLMES $25-$35 | Fri., Aug. 8, 7:30 and 10 p.m.; Sat., Aug. 9, 7 and 9:30 p.m.; Helium Comedy Club, 2031 Sansom St., 215-496-9001, heliumcomedy.com. ies Digable Planets, King Britt kept reign over a tiny but rabid
You know when you see a guy that you’re like “I’ve seen that
go off-script, to fascinating results — and enviable touring momentum, chances are you’ll start recognizing him a lot more. This semi-frequent Helium guest rolls through for
Been a while since you spent an entire day eating barbecue and rocking out at Philly’s finest venue/art gallery/mausoleum? Then you’d better hit up PhilaMOCA for its blowout concert, Philly Summer Fest,
[ events ]
11 bands starting just after lunch and jamming through the night. Highlights should include the kick-ass Philly trio Amanda X, flaunting their hot-off-the-presses, grungy new album, Amnesia; the synthy alt-pop group The Weaks; and a set courtesy of local rising pop stars Mike Bell & the Movies. And if that doesn’t convince you, there’s always the early-bird barbecue (BYO meat and veggie dogs). —Maggie Grabmeier
8.10 sunday [ pop/punk ]
PLACES TO HIDE/ THE AMBULARS $5-$7 | Sun., Aug. 10, 8 p.m., with Baby Mollusk, Whatever, Dad and Allison Crutchfield, Golden Tea House.
featuring whichever bands happened to be free this Saturday. Though the show serves as the record-release party for local screamo outfit Cassilis, the Summer Fest welcomes
Celebr ating Americ an Craft Beer and Classi c Arcade Games
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First of all, Golden Tea House doesn’t get enough credit beyond its punk-o-sphere roots. This place is great. Cheap shows, great bands, the intimacy of someone’s charmingly dirty, open-floor kitchen. Let’s
They’re also infectiously sentimental, a trait they share with the Ambulars, whose Dreamers Asleep at the Wheel LP (Salinas) makes you want to actively seek it out on vinyl, find a corner of your bedroom to crouch in and follow through on whatever else that aesthetic experience requires. Maybe it’s the cute-as-hell dual boy/girl vocal approach that gets to me. —Marc Snitzer
[ events ]
[ theater ]
CRAZYFACE $25 | Aug. 10-24, BrainSpunk at Christ Church Neighborhood House, 20 N. American St., 215-278-9504, brainspunktheater.com. Horror enthusiasts will recognize Clive Barker as the creator of film franchises Hellraiser and Candyman and a prolific author, but might not know this 1982 play receiving its area premiere by BrainSpunk Theater. The title character of what Barker calls “a fool’s epic,” played by Eric Scott Evans, travels across Europe with his family when he finds a magical box. Soon, three spies are hunting him in a satiric romp that purports to show how the rich and mighty are not any more secure than those they lord over. Barker calls Crazyface “part pageant, part circus and part meditation on the glory of clowns” on his website. “I loved writing it, spiking its high spirits with sudden eruptions of violence and scenes of strange melancholy.” Artistic director
Christopher King’s company strives to present “theater for everyone.” Their eclectic BRAINSPUNK THEATER
landmark this joint. Sunday’s lineup feels very indicative of a Golden Tea show: far-fromhome touring headliners with some local favorites. Atlanta’s Places to Hide may owe more to Weezer than they care to let on (their fuzz-pedal feet tend to get itchy quite often).
production choices, mainly staged in New York City before relocating to Philly, have included new plays as well as Thornton Wilder’s Our Town and Michael Cristofer’s The Shadow Box. —Mark Cofta
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f&d
foodanddrink
amusebouche By Adam Erace
VEG IN P.S. & CO. | 1706 Locust St., 215-985-1706, puresweets.com. Mon.-Fri., 7 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 9 a.m.-7 p.m. $2-$12.50 ➤ A CURIOUS BRINDLE-PIT mix named Tuffy
lifted her head from a patch of sunshine on the red wooden floor and trotted over to the counter to welcome me. I scratched her ears and ordered a round of cold-pressed, organic, jewel-toned juices. Tuffy is owner Andrea Kyan’s rescue pup and the unofficial mascot of this light-washed Rittenhouse café, whose gleaming glass cases are filled with organic, local, vegan, gluten-free, kosher parve, Asian-inspired foods. I loved her dog, if not her juices — alternately watery and acidic, they would have worked better as vodka mixers at a pool party. P.S.’s Locust Street digs are all stripped brick, worn wood and apothecary jars. Attractively styled piles of fruit tempt your inner Adam or Eve. Pouring in from the windows is the kind of natural light artists and photographers (and dogs) swoon over. The initials stand for Pure Sweets, Kyan’s original online business, but they could also mean Punishingly Saltless in the case of the summer roll’s tuft of clover sprouts, oranges, mint, and roasted chile tofu and weak ginger-pickled carrots wrapped in a double layer of brown rice paper that was like chewing through rubber cement. While local vegan restaurants have been striving for crossover appeal, P.S. takes a more hardcore stance — the tea party Republican of vegan eateries. Simmered with spices in house-juiced turmeric root, the creamy Burmese chickpeas couldn’t rescue a joyless kale salad topped with a scoop of brown rice, a few frizzled onions and no dressing. That’s not a salad by any eater’s standards. Another, better (but still incomplete-feeling) salad did have dressing, a sprightly carrot-ginger-miso that coated a mix of more kale and house-fermented krauts and avocado with black sesame seeds and the same tofu. Sweets are P.S.’s strongest angle, from the gumdrop-sized macaroons to lush house-made young coconut pudding crowned with mango. Ask about the “tart cups,” too; mine featured layers of pistachio cookie crumbs, cardamom-spiced coconut cream and dairy-free Askinosie chocolate ganache. Kyan built a business on these treats, but healthy cookies and an adorable dog don’t pay the rent. (adam.erace@citypaper.net)
STOKED: Joe Cicala is ready to fire up the wood-burning oven at Brigantessa. NEAL SANTOS
[ previews ]
THE LOVE OF PIE A trip to Napoli and a brush with the law lead up Brigantessa’s opening. By Caroline Russock here are plenty of passionate pizza people out there, but for chef Joe Cicala of Le Virtu and the soon-to-open Brigantessa, the fervor for authentic Neapolitan pies goes much further. When Cicala and the Le Virtu crew were hashing out plans for their second Passyunk Avenue spot, there was no question that he was going to go for VPN (Verace Pizza Napoletana) certification, a designation given to pizzerias by the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana (AVPN) based, of course, in Napoli. Cicala says there are two options to get the certification. “You could go to California and take the three-day course, but what can you learn in three days? The other option was a 10-day course in Napoli, and I wanted to do that for a couple of reasons. It’s the birthplace of pizza and it was a more intensive course. I wanted to learn the information and not just get the certification.” What he got was in-depth VPN training, with four hours of pizza theory in the morning and another four hours of practical — hands-on pizza making — in the afternoon. “The most important thing to understand about the VPN is that it’s not a mark of quality. It’s [about] the pizzaiolo, or pizza maker,”
T
explains Cicala, “It’s the hand that makes the pizza a good pizza. What they do is they regulate how the pizza is made and what ingredients are used. Mostly they’re concerned about the dough preparation. The ingredients are water, flour, yeast and salt.” Cicala was one of only three non-Italian students in the class, and language was a bit of an issue. Though he speaks textbook Italian, these classes were taught in a Neapolitan dialect. “The first thing that they tell you on the first day is that there is no recipe and you’re like, ‘Oh great, what did I sign on for?’” At the AVPN, the endgame is to create a dough that is malleable, in keeping with surrounding elements. It means taking into consideration humidity, air pressure and elevation, to craft an ideal pizza base. On the final day of the course, Cicala and his pizzamaking classmates were given a written exam and asked to make marinara and margherita pies in front of a board of executives. Cicala passed with the highest grade in the class, a 67. “In the States, that would be failing, but over there the theory is that only master pizzaioli would test into the 90s.” Passing the pizza training with flying colors is all well and good, but Cicala’s time in Napoli wasn’t all San Marzano-topped slices and mozzarella dreams. Part of the class included staging at a pizzeria. Cicala was assigned to Figlia del Presidente, a widely known shop that spe-
READ MORE citypaper.net/ mealticket
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[ food & drink ]
â&#x153;&#x161; The Love Of Pie <<< continued from page 33
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cializes in pizza fritta (double-layered, deep-fried pizza). â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was a lot of fun. Youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re hanging out with a bunch of Neapolitans wisecracking. The atmosphere in the kitchen is always the same no matter where you are.â&#x20AC;? Around midnight, after finishing his first shift, Cicala headed to the bus stop as he made his way back to his hotel. That was when he spied the carabinieri or Italian military police headed his way. â&#x20AC;&#x153;I was dressed like a pizzaiolo, in white from head to toe with the handkerchief and all of that bullshit that they make you do. Italy loves uniforms,â&#x20AC;? Cicala recalled. The carabinieri tend to haunt bus stops and train stations in search of illegal immigrants, sussing out whoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s who by checking documents. That morning, Cicala had been running behind and left his passport at his hotel. This was not good news for the carabinieri or Cicala. With no documents to prove that he was, in fact, in Napoli to master the art of Neapolitan pizza, Cicala was arrested and handcuffed to a park bench. Cicala did his best to explain that he was in school, but when the carabinieri called to verify his story no oneanswered. Given that it was 1 a.m., that makes perfect sense. Then they called the pizzeria where he had just finished his first shift, and again there was trouble. Strike three came when the carabinieri called the hotel and the person at the front desk said there was no one by the name of Joe Cicala staying there. (Cicala had registered under his full legal name, Thomas Joseph Cicala.) After nearly an hour of sweating, with visions of being locked up in an Italian prison, Cicala remembered that he had his American driverâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s license in his back pocket. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Forty-five minutes of my life were gone, but eventually it was straightened out and they let me go with a lecture about how I should always have my passport on me,â&#x20AC;? he says. So thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the story of how Cicala got schooled in the art of Verace Pizza Neapolitana as well as in Italian law. Things back home are going much more smoothly. Brigantessa (1520 E. Passayunk Ave.), is housed in a gorgeous building overlooking the Singing Fountain and is slated to open at the beginning of September. He installed a custom-made, Italian, wood-fired oven, where heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s going to be making traditional Neapolitan pizzas along with some fun pies like â&#x20AC;&#x2122;nduja (a spicy, spreadable sausage) with ricotta and fermented chiles. But Brigantessa isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t strictly a pizzeria. Cicala calls it a combination pizzeria-birreria-enoteca-forneria, or, in laymanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s terms a place to get an awesome selection of antipasti, pastas, pizzas, wood-fired mains and desserts. But pizza is a pretty serious part of the equation and Cicala has no hard feelings toward Italian officals. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Once weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re in operation, weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re going to have the guys from Napoli come and certify the restaurant,â&#x20AC;? he says. (caroline@citypaper.net)
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James J. Anderson Construction Co., Inc. will receive sealed bids for Contract No. RM 2014-01: Industrial Track Rehabilitation until 1:00 PM, prevailing time, on Tuesday, August 26, 2014, to the attention of Mr. Richard Raffo, James J. Anderson Construction Company, Inc., 6958 Torresdale Ave., Suite 300, Philadelphia, PA 19135. All bids will be publicly opened and read aloud at that time. The work for this project consists of rehabilitating track at the Riverside Materials, Inc. facility of James J. Anderson Construction Co., Inc. at 2870 E. Allegheny Ave., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19134. The Contract will be awarded to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder who has based his bid in accordance with the Contract Documents. Award of the Contract is subject to the approval of the PA DOT Bureau of Rail Freight, Ports and Waterways who is providing a portion of the funds to complete the project. Bidding documents, including typical drawings and technical specifications, are on file at the office of Mr. Richard Raffo at the James J. Anderson Construction Company, Inc. at the address listed above. Copies of the bidding documents may be obtained by depositing a non-refundable payment of $115.00 with Jannotti Rail Consulting, Inc., P.O. Box 490, 401 Akeley Road - Russell, Pa. 16345, (814-757-9460) for each set of bidding documents so obtained. Addenda, if any, will be issued to only those persons whose name and address are on record with Jannotti Rail Consulting, Inc.
A non-mandatory pre-bid conference will be held at the Riverside Materials, Inc. facility at 2870 E. Allegheny Ave., Philadelphia, PA 19134 at 10:00 AM, prevailing time, on Thursday, August 7, 2014. The Contractor, in accordance with Executive Orders 11625 and 12138, must utilize to the greatest extent feasible, minority and / or women owned business concerns which are located within the municipality, county or the general trade area. Attention is called to the fact that not less than the minimum salaries and wages as set forth in the Contract Documents must be paid on this project; that the contractor must ensure that employees and applicants for employment are not discriminated against because of their race, age, color, religion, sex, national origin, or handicap; that a mandatory ratio of apprentices and trainees to journeymen is required in each craft and the contractor (and any subcontractors) is obliged to make a â&#x20AC;&#x153;diligent effortâ&#x20AC;? to achieve these ratios; and that to the greatest extent feasible, opportunities for training and employment be given lower income persons of the project area and must to the greatest extent feasible utilize project area businesses located in or owned in substantial part by project area residents. The Owner reser ves the right to reject any or all Bids, and to waive any informalities, bidding irregularities or technicalities in the bidding process. Bids may be held by the Owner for a period not to exceed 60 days from the date of opening bids for the purpose of reviewing the bids and investigating the qualifications of bidders, prior to awarding the contract. Mr. Richard Raffo James J. Anderson Construction Company, Inc. AIRLINE CAREERS BEGIN HERE
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Apt for Rent, South Philadelphia, Broad & Ritner -Great Area 2 bedroom 1 bath, Hardwood floors Granite To p s - N ew A p p l i a n c e s Washer & Dr yer-Patio & Central Air- $1095 month. Call 215-292-2176 WELCOME HOME TO ALLENS LANE APARTMENTS 126 W. ALLENS LANE PHILADELPHIA PA 19119
in beautiful West Mt. Airy. We are so excited to become part of the neighborhood again. 1 and 2 bedroom units are available, starting at $999 per month. Allens Lane Apar tments are coming
back brand new including: Stainless Appliances that include dishwasher, microwave and garbage disposal, Granite Countertops, Cherry Wood Cabinets, Central A/C, Washer/Dryer combo In each unit and Private Parking. Within walking distance to train and bus transportation. Call Jackie at 215-290-1617 for more information and to view apartments.
jonesin’
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27 31
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By Matt Jones
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“METRIC FEET” — A CONVERSION DIVERSION.
WYNNFIELD HEIGHTS
2 bdrm apt. w-w carpet, a/c, ceiling fans, private entrance, newly renovated. Conv. to public trans. $900/mo, cold water incl, 1st mo rent &1 mo sec. req. Credit check. Ideal for single professional. No pets; non-smoker. 27xx Cranston Rd. 215-668-8316.
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Desirable tree-lined street. 3 bdrm. Close CC trans. No pets. Serious inquires. 215551-8198.
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Botch the job Electronic keys Fiji rival “___ won’t do that” (Meat Loaf line) Ghostly glow A Midsummer Night’s Dream king 911 call responder Making all your beer the night before? Be eco-friendly Quentin cast her in Kill Bill: Vol. 1 Lead character in Zoolander? Magnificent car driven by giant B-movie ants? Drake’s acronym Swanson and Burgundy Digging Brandish Diacritical dots Impressed reactions Beaver with a mohawk? Driving range barrier Stir-fry ingredient Flat-screen variety Daly of Cagney & Lacey Ashen “Right, right” Part of a door to a cemetery? As a rule, in the dict. Chronic complainer Watchmen actor Jackie ___ Haley
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Comeuppance at the pool? “___ the ramparts we watched...” Lackey Enthusiastic Chillax Grow too old for an activity Entreats Dir. from Dallas to Philly
✚ DOWN 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 19 21 25 26 27 28 32 33 35
Cabinet department Joker portrayer Cesar Ceremonial act Turned towards Pronoun for two Sports ___ Filmmaker Peckinpah “Nessun ___” “You could really be ___ Brummell baby...” (Billy Joel line) Do some quilting Emma Stone, by birth Fourth piggy’s portion Dramatist who wrote Picnic Rear ends The white stuff? Bald tire’s lack Chariots of Fire Oscar nominee Ian Tactic in bridge Up to the point that, casually Weekday abbr. Mel of Cooperstown Groom’s answer
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Anesthetized NYSE or NASDAQ Fitting “You, there!” Optimistic The Daily Bruin publisher According to Plastic option Violin tuners ___ Tuesday Brennan who played Mrs. Peacock in Clue Become apparent Kind of pear Speak boastfully of “Dirty ___ Done Dirt Cheap” Cadets’ inst. Drink from a flask “Water enhancer” brand Caps lock neighbor “___ seen worse” It takes a light, for short
LAST WEEK’S SOLUTION
[ i love you, i hate you ] To place your FREE ad (100 word limit) ➤ email lovehate@citypaper.net A DESPERATE STUDENT Ok so all I’m going to say is: You’re my teacher and I am in love with you. Everytime our eyes met, it feels as though you love me too. I know it wouldn’t be right to say something so I’m putting my feelings aside for now. I know you wouldn’t risk it but I still feel as though there is a chance. Just to let you know, after I graduate, I AM NO LONGER YOUR STUDENT. Knowing that, we should go out sometime after and talk about art. And don’t worry, your age does not exceed my limit.
these big ass fucking headphones on their ears? Are you a DJ? LOL, it looks fucking stupid and funny at the same time! I was wondering if your stupid ass could hear the world around you! I guess not! People really need to pay more attention to what they are doing and wearing on their ears walking around. It doesn’t make any sense God-forbid if something happens, then what!@
I HEARD Through the grapvine that you are back in the city,
BLACK WIDOW That’s what we call you. Well, except at 2 a.m. when you’re screaming, “Get the fuck out,” or “Stop treating me like a whore.” Then we call you That Crazy Fucking Bitch. Don’t you get it? If you don’t want your boyfriend to treat you like a whore, then stop acting like one. And, if you repeatedly invite over an emotionally abusive man for sex, you’re not JUST a whore, but a dumb cunt, too.
call and just ask if I’m o.k. would that be so hard? I’m talking to you, you know who this is from, or maybe you don’t, maybe you had a bunch of stupid women. For your sake I hope you didn’t do that to other women cause in the long run someone judges us all, my conscience is clear, can you say the same?
He is only 18 and you are 34! I am going to punch you in the face when I see you! Don’t tell me a lie and say that you were drunk! That just doesn’t fly with me! I hate the fact that you are just an angry person and I don’t want my son catching any diseases from your tired ass! So long bitch!
LOOK
NOW LET ME AT THE TRUTH...
You need to stop. We had a chance maybe eight, seven years ago, and we both blew it. Even if we both wanted to get together now, we can’t because
Our time has passed? What does that mean? There was a specific period in time for us to spend time together and now it’s over? That doesn’t make sense. What are you, a fatalist? How can you love me? We haven’t even spent a day together. Not a real one. If you’re simply not interested and you’re trying to let me down easy, spare me. That’s fine. You’re not dashing any hopes. There were none to begin with. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s “what-ifs.” I have too many as it is. If you have something to say, be a man and come talk to me. Fuck this I love you/I hate you bullshit. Stop making me think I’m crazy. If you care about me like you say you do, you’ll do me this one act of kindness. Of “love.”
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DEAR SUGAR BALL To the biggest and oldest scout around...Dont think that it’s not known that you are a thief. You could steal a smile if it came with spoons and waterbottles. I wonder if Dick Tracy is still employed as a detective because I would call him to investigate your goofy ass. How dare you ask how things were since you left? Seriously!!! Look around nothing was reported stolen..I thought Little Red Riding Hood brought treats in the basket not steal them. You are gonna get caught like a fish on a hook...oh and by the way America's favorite cookie is OREO!!!! From the big bad wolf. If you want things to keep moving forward, then you have to keep moving forward...
DEAREST JOHN Dearest—I moved to your block and thought it would rock but you keep leaving the States and expect that I’ll wait. You don’t seem to care ‘bout my lips or my snatch don’t understand that I’m a dope catch. I bend over backwards but never in bed I’m taken for granted, never feel fed. Please take your perfection and your selfishness too, ‘cause I love you, I hate you and finally, we’re through.
DON’T BE LAZY What the fuck are you saving your work for me to do! I don’t appreciate the laziness and I don’t appreciate you! You’re so old and shit and you just don’t know where you fit in! I don’t understand the fact that you thought you were gonna put shit on me where as I got alot of shit on me already. What kind of mess is that! I hate the fact that you call me over and over again when I am out of the office like your some kind of fool or something for something that can wait until the Monday or so! I don’t understand a lot of things that you do but I hope that the time away brings you great things. And actually the mind frame of I gotta get my shit together.
HEADPHONES Why are some women walking around wearing
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and you’re doing well. I don’t get to be a part of that? when you were sick and in the hospital for 5 days I stayed there, overnight, went to work and would come back. even when your family wouldn’t help you out I fed you, paid your rent, I thought it was love but on reflection you played me like a violin, karma is a bitch and what goes around, comes around! you gave me a disease that is going to kill me, not today, not tomorrow I’m gonna suffer. And all because I thought what we had was that special “true love” prove me wrong, I’m sick of being right about loser men , show me that your different, ask me if I need help, if you can bring me cigarettes, anything,even
of her. She’s my friend again, and I won’t betray her again. She said she would never be with my exes, and I have to grant her the same courtesy. It’s too bad because I really had it for you. But that’s what happens when you don’t get there first. That’s just the way this life has turned out. It can’t be.
YOU, miss, are a fucking lying, poseur, bitch cunt. you talk shit on everyone but act nice to their face. You purposefully make yourself a victim in a victimless situation. You make it seem like everyone is out to get you when, in fact, you’re out to get everyone else. You make pretend you’re this fragile, innocent little girl but NEWSFLASH! You are my age. You’re not a little girl and you need to start acting like the adult you physically are. I mean, going on a tirade because someone ate your last Pop-Tart? Really? Going crazy because you can’t find your Powerpuff Girls Monopoly game?????? And then you have the fucking balls to break a family heirloom and complain that it was in your way?! The thing was three times your size and it was in your way? The skinniest person in the house couldn’t manage to get by it but everyone else can? And then you get your bitch, excuse me, your boyfriend to pick up the pieces like nothing ever happened. Going around pissing everyone off and using people like yesterday’s trash will definitely come back to bite you in the ass. Oh, and when it does, have faith that I will be there with a camera.
NOT IMPORTANT! You think that you are so hot shit and you are not! Who the fuck do you think that you are anyway? I was thinking to myself that I wanted to do something nice for you! And then you turn around and do some shit like what you did! You slept with my son! C I T Y PA P E R . N E T | A U G U S T
✚ ADS ALSO APPEAR AT CITYPAPER.NET/lovehate. City Paper has the right to re-publish “I Love You, I Hate You”™ ads at the publisher’s discretion. This includes re-purposing the ads for online publication, or for any other ancillary publishing projects.
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