A Million Stories

Evan M. Lopez

A councilperson can't possibly live without a calendar, a daily schedule of events, appointments, obligations.

At least, that's what City Paper thought when we first came across the startling suggestion that Councilman W. Wilson Goode Jr. keeps no calendar. Either the information was bad or the councilman possesses a memory of staggering precision.

CP first unearthed the possibility that Goode works sans calendar while reporting on our feature about the city's tenacity for rejecting public Right-to-Know records requests — including a request by the Inquirer's Jeff Shields for the daily schedules of all 17 City Councilpersons, as well as Mayor Michael Nutter ["Hall of Secrets," Cover Story, Sept. 9, 2010], partly to see who they were meeting with. The city denied the request (now pending review by the Court of Common Pleas), arguing that the records would reveal travel patterns and thus pose a safety risk to the pols — oh, and that "One [Council member] keeps no calendar " anyway.

"I sent a memo to each Council member asking about the type of calendar he/she uses," affirmed City Council Right-to-Know officer Anne Kelly King this week, "and Councilman Goode verbally responded that he doesn't keep a calendar."

Asked to confirm (or deny) that he keeps no recorded schedule, Goode told CP, "I did not say that. I did not authorize them to say that. So beyond that, I have no comment!"

When CP sought clarification of that statement via e-mail — does he or doesn't he keep a calendar? — Goode replied : "I'll give you one simple response in writing [and then, in bold, 24-point font]: I never told anyone that I didn't keep a calendar!"

City Paper asked one last time, via e-mail, if that means he does keep a calendar. The councilman has not, so far, responded.

Speaks volumes

This past Sunday, local songwriter and blues guitarist Shakey Lyman walked into popular West Philadelphia bar Fiume and delivered two startling pieces of information.

The first was that he'd gotten married — just the previous night, in fact. "I'm going to milk this for all it's worth," Lyman added, dutifully repeating the news for each wave of bar patrons to show up for his weekly Sunday gig.

His second tale, though, was of a darker hue. The conversation had turned to books, and how they pile up. Lyman weighed in: Contemplating a move last year, he says, he determined to let go of some 1,800 books — just a portion of his collection — for free. First, he contacted libraries, but found none interested. He then tried a few used bookstores, but they, too, seemed unenthusiastic: One store reluctantly agreed to take the books if Shakey himself transported them: "Here I'm giving them away for free because I'm sick of moving them myself," he complained, "and they want me to transport them." Still plagued by his surplus today, Lyman is surprised that demand for used books should be so low, a sentiment echoed by those at the bar.

"Nobody wanted 'em. They wouldn't touch 'em!" he concluded, to the general raising of glasses.

—Isaiah Thompson

Christmas came early for Philadelphia's casino opponents last week, when the proposed South Philadelphia casino formerly known as Foxwoods was finally stripped of its license by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board last Thursday, after years of delays. The board will now have to rebid the license, which could take years.

One of the casino's bitterest opponents was less than merry, however, with news accounts in the next day's papers — in particular, timelines by the Inquirer and the Associated Press that offered a blow-by-blow history of the four-year Foxwoods saga. These accounts, says Casino-Free Philadelphia co-founder Daniel Hunter (who is writing a book about the experience), leave out almost any mention of the role neighborhood and civic opposition played in bringing down Foxwoods. "I think it does a real disservice to the story," Hunter says, echoing a point made by historian Howard Zinn, in his A People's History of the United States, which argues that history is too often seen as shaped by the wealthy and powerful — and not common people's movements.

Hunter offered on the phone a brief "People's History of Foxwoods," describing the 2006 founding of Casino-Free Philadelphia and its earliest efforts under the administration of Mayor John Street, a proponent, to thwart the casinos' plans — in part by using a clever homemade citizen "ballot box" to push mayoral candidate Michael Nutter to support a buffer between casinos and neighborhoods (he did, later changing his tune).

In the meantime, casino opponents pursued a subtle strategy that ultimately, Hunter says, paid off: delay, delay, delay.

They filed petitions and legal challenges, pushed members of Council and candidate and then Mayor Nutter to hold up the casinos at every turn possible: zoning matters, licensing, whatever.

When Foxwoods, whose owners were already squirming under an impending deadline, tried to move to Market East near Chinatown in 2008, Hunter argues that massive neighborhood opposition (Chinatown activists promised to stand in front of bulldozers, if it came down to it) helped delay, if not thwart, the plans. Foxwoods was eventually ordered back to its original location along the waterfront.

"Leaving out the neighborhood opposition doesn't make sense to me," Hunter concludes. "It reasserts the notion that it's politicians who direct how things happen in the city."

—I.T.

With census 2010 data just becoming available to the public, The New York Times recently launched "Mapping America," a flashy, hyper-detailed online map of the ethnic and racial makeup of America, block by block. Intrigued, City Paper took it for a spin and put Philadelphia under the ol' microscope to see which census tracts were most heavily dominated by each ethnic group listed. Here's what we found (in the same order as the NYT map legend):

Whitest: Port Richmond made a stab for first at 96 percent white, but the prize goes, in fact, to the neighborhood around Wilson Park, near 25th and Snyder, which is roughly 97 percent.

Blackest: Though a patch of North Philly north of Temple came close at 99 percent black, a swath of Mantua and Powelton Village, between 40th and 44th and north of Market won at 100 percent.

Most Hispanic: The most densely Hispanic tract — 86 percent — lies in the heart of Philly's "Centro de Oro," neighborhood in eastern North Philly, between B and Fifth north of Lehigh.

Most Asian: In South Philly between Fifth and 10th and Mifflin and Wolf, Asians are 33 percent of the area's diverse population: 29 percent white, 19 percent black, 16 percent Hispanic.

Most diverse: Along with the South Philly section above, the most evenly split neighborhood we could find was the stretch of Frankford between Castor and Summerdale and Unruh and Oxford, where it's white (27 percent), black (34 percent), Hispanic (23 percent) and Asian (12 percent).

— I.T.