Spring. Woo.

by Brian Howard

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Published: Mar 31, 2009

I was starting to doubt whether spring was gonna get here. I mean, we had a freaking hailstorm over the weekend. But hey, it's here, at least technically. Bringing an end to what's felt like an agonizingly long, cold, dry winter, even by Philadelphia standards. It feels a good to be celebrating the sunshine.

Yes, the Phillies — ahem — the World F. Champion Phillies take the field this week in defense of their hard-fought, rain-drenched chip.

Our Sports Complex columnist, E. James Beale, runs down the hometown nine's chances this season in our cover story, starting on p. 16. And on p. 46, food editor/Meal Ticket blogger Drew Lazor goes behind the lines at Citizens Bank Park's kitchens to discover that the stadium chefs are out to defend their title, as well, bringing fresh, local and vegetarian to new heights.

Yes, Villanova's gone from sweet to elite to the final four, keeping March Madness alive in Philly. (Follow Beale's coverage at citypaper.net/sportcomplex.)

And yes, on Saturday everyone's gonna put on their work gloves, their ratty sneakers and that pair of jeans they don't mind getting dirty and nice up Philly during the mayor's second annual Spring Cleanup. Hizzonor himself tells you all about it on p. 12.

But sunshine and spring notwithstanding, it's been a pretty beat-nut winter, and the recent warm snap like waking from a bad dream. The city budget's decimated. The recession is slithering this way and that. And our shiny new president seems hamstrung by haters.

Most of the stories we read about the economic crisis are about the budget and gargantuan bailouts. That's why a couple of weeks ago on The Clog, this paper's staff blog, Doron Taussig wrote: "[T]he recession is affecting people in more ways than that. It's affecting household budgets, routines, emotional states, career plans — you know what it's affecting, because it's most likely affecting you."

We received one response from Susan, a bill collector who claims that nastiness on the phone has picked up: "Nice people can settle these affairs without ostracizing or humiliating the person on the other end of the line. But, this goes both ways. Snide remarks about how much I make an hour or what an unconscionable subhuman I am will get us nowhere."

Sadly, civility does seem to be one of the first casualties of a downturn. Let's hope the sunshine snaps us up out of our collective SAD. But in the meantime, if you've got a recession story, e-mail it to recession@citypaper.net or go to citypaper.net/clog, keyword: Broke in Philly.

If you're holding the printed version of this publication — and if you're not I suggest you run out and grab a copy — you've probably noticed that things look a little bit different around here. We've undergone a REDESIGN! Now for those not in the biz, a redesign is an exercise wherein a paper's editorial department and design department are placed in a steel cage with sharpened sticks, bricks and bags of rusty nails, and the winning team is allowed to decide which font the paper is printed in. Editorial won and decided on Comic Sans, at which point our publisher pronounced the design department winner on a technicality. The result is the completely revamped edition you are now certainly holding in your hands. The tireless work of our editorial art director, Reseca Glasser, and designers Allie Rossignol and Carrie South, City Paper's new look freshens things up considerably, incorporates lots of easy-on-the-eyes white space (gotta love that left-justified body copy), and gives us two big gorgeous spreads to kick off our Naked City (news and features) and Arts & Entertainment sections. For fans of our old Hit and Run section, we introduce quick-hits features A Million Stories, p. 9, and Kaleidoscope, p. 27. If you like the new look (or if you don't), hit me up at:

(bhoward@citypaper.net)

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