the list

Shankweiler’s, America’s oldest operating movie drive-in, encapsulates that old-fashioned childhood wonder of entertaining liberation under the stars. Opened in 1934, a mere ten months after the opening of America’s first drive-in, it’s newly open all year long. Winter weekends are a concession of its new owner, Mobile Cinema Company, which sets up screens all over the great outdoors. Principals Lauren

Outside of being the month where Philadelphia gets to vote in its Mayoral primaries (and I don’t envy any local that decision, the lesser of its evils), May is this weird transitional time in Philadelphia that isn’t June and summer as yet. And isn’t it sad that Philly has no spring?

May is good for its dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary, Jewish American Heritage, Flores de Mayo, and the Kaamatan harvest festival. May is also National Pet Month, National Smile Month in the UK, and Bicycle, Golf, and Burger Month. No way you can’t find something to love in May despite its tiny transitional nature.

McChesney and Matthew McClanahan met at the Mahoning drive-in in Lehighton, which McClanahan helped save from extinction via prohibitively expensive digital turnover by significantly boosting viewership with vintage 35mm prints of classic/cult double and triple bills. McClanahan grew up on familiar family films at Shankweiler’s, which last month paired Super Mario Brothers with the Woody Harrelsonled Champions, a funny heart-warmer about outcast basketballers. The off-screen menu features chili dogs, funnel cake and mango water ice. Visual cotton candy is provided by a sweet neon sign, with “Shankweiler’s” tucked inside a beaconing, beckoning arrow. And what other drive-in is fronted by a funeral parlor? Talk about a trueblue, one-two punch of roadside Americana. (4540 Shankweiler Rd, corner of Route 309, Orefield; 610-481-0800; shankweilers.com)

The Lehigh Valley IronPigs epitomize mediocrity, having lost six games more than they’ve won over 14 seasons as a minor-league partner of the Philadelphia Phillies. Their home, however, has always been

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Geoff Gehman is a former arts writer for The Morning Call in Allentown and the author of five books, including Planet Mom: Keeping an Aging Parent from Aging, The Kingdom of the Kid: Growing Up in the LongLost Hamptons, and Fast Women and Slow Horses: The (mis)Adventures of a Bar, Betting and Barbecue Man (with William Mayberry) He lives in Bethlehem. geoffgehman@verizon.net

So, it’s the top of May, and its warm weather always signals a time to dine and drink outdoors in the breeze—preferably a spicy cuisine and cocktail list to require cool, nighttime winds on the walk home. Welcome, then, to Bolo, Chef Yun Josué Fuentes Morales’ new Latin American dining room and rum bar at Rittenhouse Square’s 2025 Sansom Street. Fuentes was the Executive Chef at Stephen Starr’s beloved Alma de Cuba with mentor Chef Douglas Rodriguez, and Bolo offers both a traditional and modern twist on its ceviches, piscolabis, pinchos, cuchifritos, platillos, postres, a Latin focused coffee program AND rum-based classics like piña colada and mojitos to its signature concoctions like French Twist and the Coco Bolo. I’ll be Bolo-ed this spring, for sure.

The Girard Avenue Street Festival, the South Street Festival, the Rittenhouse Row Spring Festival, Chestnut Hill Home and Garden Festi-

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A.D. Amorosi is a Los Angeles Press Club National Art and Entertainment Journalism award-winning journalist and national public radio host and producer (WPPM.org’s Theater in the Round) married to a garden-to-table cooking instructor + award-winning gardener, Reese, and father to dogdaughter Tia.