Miscellaneous: November 2009 Archives

Last year, we took Thanksgiving as an opportunity to thank all of you, our wonderful readers, for checking the site, posting comments, submitting photos, and generally being awesome. We also took it as an opportunity to show off our mad kindergarten art skills. This year, we'd like to do both of those things again.

I have a new favorite park. Well, a new favorite park that I probably will not get to visit all that often because it's a bit far from where I live and I don't have much business in its neighborhood. I'm talking about Coxe Park, on Cherry Street and Beechwood Street (which interestingly enough, Google maps is unable to find. It's between 21st and 22nd streets.)

Jimmy (ID# A08242414)

Lately there's been a lot of brou-ha-ha over the use of the road. Spruce and Pine got some fancy new bike lanes just as reporting of bike-pedestrian accidents went to print. Now, the general hum of Philly hostility is increasing. Who gets to blow which stoplight, and which group gets to most egregiously flout the rules without consequences. Are bicyclists the worst because some idiots insist on riding with their headphones? Or are they the worst kind of scum because hipsters love their fixies? But what about cars? Aren't they the folks with the polluting and the South Philly Roll, the 2-ton death machines, cell phones, and lack of turn signals? And man, those pedestrians. They just walk out into traffic in front of everybody. Everyone hates them.

DCist caught up with the dapper gents and ladies who took to the streets in high style for the D.C. Tweed Ride.

So this week's asshole is coming not from Philadelphia, but from the internet. After last week's delve into the personal, we're taking it out into the tubes.

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Goldie

A fence surrounds the park, leaving only an opening at the Carpenter/13th Street corner. A shrub with bright pink flowers grows over by the fence along Christian Street, an unexpected summery display standing in contrast to the the bare trees and fallen leaves all over the rest of the park. Ridgeway is one of a number of parks participating in this week's Fall for Your Park leaf clean up, see below for more details.

So you may have heard: New Jersey has kidnapped the 2010 Dad Vail Regatta. Well, more like bought. Why Rumson, NJ has an extra $250,000 to throw around, we don't know. But what we do know is the Dad Vail has been raced on the Schuylkill River every year since 1953. Over those 50+ years it has become an integral part of Philly sports culture. To take it off the Schuylkill and move it into New Jersey is like taking the Bike Race out of Manayunk. Like defacing the Rocky Statue. Like imploding the Spectrum. Oh wait. We're actually going to do that.

Pip

Not a big change, but still a big sexy demolition.

Seattlest reminded us that we don't watch Mariners baseball for the game, we watch it for the player-on-player bromance.

Normally our Asshole of the Week has done something to wrong groups of people: children, charities, whole cities—or, sometimes (actually, many times) they wrong poor defenseless puppies and kitties. But our socially contentious moralista Miss Erica M has the day off today, and I'm steering this wagon right down selfish hill. So, douche-monkey fuck-tard who swiped my bag at the Electric Factory last night, you're right up there with kitten torturers and SEPTA. Feel good about that, do you?

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Beauty (ID# A09075075)

Dr. Moyer (ID# A08845169)

Seattlest talked about gay marriage, performing, and the sexiness of the Pacific Northwest with Rufus Wainwright.

This week, Miss Bee is back at it with her picks. She made them based on the median inner-city bus driver wage for each metropolitan area. For New England she used Boston. These numbers are taken from Department of Labor surveys.

As promised, we hate TWU Local 234 now. The folks of TWU 234 have thoroughly established themselves as villains, and we'd like to recognize them for being bastardly sleazes out of a Medieval morality play. And now, the tour of vice!

The 2008 Phillies were a surprising and welcome departure from the Philly sports norm. Let's face it: We've gotten used to coming up short—whether short or barely short. Not long after the Phillies paraded down Broad Street last Halloween, the Eagles returned the cosmos to their rightful balance. (Villanova's Final Four appearance was an unexpected bonus that threatened to upset the recently-restored natural order of things. Fortunately for the universe, North Carolina did not allow the end of days to come about.)

Ah, Delancey Street... Always so pretty, particularly right now when the leaves are falling upon the cobblestone. That brings us to this week's park: Three Bears Park, or Delancey Park. It's a quaint little park located at 319 Delancey Street in Society Hill. The park offers a nice place of refuge if you're trying to get away from the hubbub of South Street (read: screaming and skateboarding teens) a few blocks away.

*Why yes—it is, in fact, Wednesday. And Monday Manners has been on hiatus for several months. But this seemed like an appropriate occasion to revive the post anyway.

Armani (ID# A08940074)

The easiest solution is to hop on your bike and pedal your way to work. Biking to work is faster than driving, walking, or using public transit. We don't even need to mention the obvious health benefits of getting that half hour or so of exercise daily. According to the Bicycle Coalition, around 11,000 Philadelphians commute to work via bicycle each day, a number that makes us the city with the highest number of folks biking to work each day. And to help out those who decide to commute by bike during the SEPTA strike, the Bicycle Coalition will be setting up a "Bike the Strike" stand at Dilworth Plaza starting this afternoon and every day until the strike is over. The stand will have bike racks, free bike maps, and free coffee. For those new to biking in the city, or for those with questions about route planning and safety, the Coalition's Bike Ambassadors will be available to give out advice.