On Saturday night, as he rode his new green and white dirt bike down a wooded lane in Tacony Creek Park on Wyoming Avenue, Luis Navarro was shot and killed. His mother, who had purchased the bike, had a nervous breakdown and was taken to Einstein Hospital.

Sixteen-year-old Clifton Taylor has his fist lodged under his chin, Thinker-style. The gangly kid with dangling cornrows is trying to figure out what to do about the boy who had died of a toothache.

Earlier this year, the employees at Yuengling's Pottsville brewery decertified — i.e. got rid of — their local Teamsters union after ownership stopped negotiating with the union. Anonymous workers told the Associated Press that brewery owner Dick Yuengling promised the employees he would close the place down if they didn't boot the Teamsters.

Patronize both the Reading Terminal and the new Headhouse Farmers Market | If he bothered to make even the simplest inquiry, Schimmel could get answers | I want to thank you for the fairest treatment we received in the media | The last 14 pages of your paper are disgusting and revolting | Your article makes the erroneous assumption that we need health insurance.  We need a good health care system

Local wiseguys aren't taking any bets on whether one of their own will ultimately be incriminated in the NBA's high-profile betting scandal.

There I was at the end of a 25-deep line outside the northeast entrance to City Hall, waiting for security to decide whether to grant me entrance into a building that I pay for with each bimonthly slice of the wage-tax shiv.

While lawyers and any other professional group often back various candidates, tort reform must certainly be a prevailing issue for them. (They need to litigate to survive, after all.)

In the not-too-distant future, in a city not unlike Philadelphia, life for black people is going from bad to worse.

A couple of weeks ago, I was informed that I was going through my Saturn Return, an astrological phenomenon that occurs in a person's life at 27 to 30 years of age.

The question here isn't so much whether you should see Wicked — if you have any affection for musical theater, you should — but whether you should see it (or see it again) this time around.

Many artists have examined post-Katrina life in New Orleans during recent years. But for a New Orleans expat by way of Philadelphia, and a Big Easy resident since the 1990s, finding a way to document culture meant pairing photography with folk art.

"When I started writing this book in January 2005, I was asked several times by colleagues and others if I really intended to call it Fiasco," Thomas E. Ricks writes in the postscript to the just-published paperback edition of his account of the Iraq war.

Some people catch up with old friends over a cup of coffee. Chris Seamans reunited with his buddies onstage, drenched in blood and gore.

Local community collaborative GeoClan is putting a twist on the standard show by using its annual festival, The Art Fix, to convey a message: Co-organizers Jude Graham and Maia Rosser mean to spread GeoClan's motto of promoting social and political change while nursing creativity.

Pick a corner, any corner. Betcha PhillyHistory.org contains a photograph of your chosen location, shot sometime between the 1870s and now.

A decade or two ago, there was a sort of modern folk tale circulating around Northern Africa about a town in the Atlas Mountains whose former residents were experiencing great difficulty remaining dead.

While he's currently touring in support of a rather simple videogame soundtrack featuring decent guests  and lots of rough rock-on-rap reproducing, Z-Trip is better known for being the underground hip-hop equivalent of 2 Many DJs.

Justin Berger's Diaspora Series has been promoting shows fusing world music with experimental and jazz for several months, but this latest edition may wander the farthest astray — to some fantasy locale of carnival nostalgia and Victrola nightmares.

Stan Ridgway has had a substantial musical career since Wall of Voodoo splintered in 1983. The talky, adenoidal crooner with a pulp novelist's lyrical mien scored a slew of indie flicks and played with his wife, keyboardist Pietra Wexstun, in Drywall and Hecate's Angels.

Wok 'N Walk | Roy's Island Hop | Clambake at Valanni | Sommelier Smackdown | Best-Kept-Secrets Wine Dinner

1| The Park, The Pop Shop 2| Grilled 3 Cheeses, Good Dog Bar 3| Grilled Cheese Bites, North Bowl 4| Euro Grilled Cheese, Chapterhouse Cafe 5| The Big Cheese Toastee, The Sidecar Bar & Grille

Husband and wife Matt and Sonjia Spector have earned Matyson accolades since 2003. There are a handful of legendary marriages in the food and wine world, as well.

With Zappa Plays Zappa, the eccentric guitarist and composer's son is keeping his nu-rock tunes alive.

The new 10,000-square-foot Foster's location unites contemporary urban design meccas Foster's Gourmet Cookware and Foster's Urban Homeware under one fashionably quirky roof.

Holly Sullivan's "stuffies" pack more personality than your average teddy. The Newark-based artist equips each funky, handmade creature with a zany biography to match.

Interactive Folktales | Feathered Friends Weekend | Cold-Blooded Creatures | Summer Memories Locker Project

Picasso sure isn't luring me to the Art Museum. Neither is that boxing guy. But ever since learning that Toni Colette ran up its steps in In Her Shoes, I've been thinking of paying a visit.

The closest thing to "punk" about me is the Blink-182 CD I bought in seventh grade. That was about the last time I ran more than 10 feet.

If you take a stroll through the heart of West Philly and peek into the many grocery stores and businesses, it's easy to see the African influence in the neighborhood.