23rd Annual Fiction Contest

Meet Your New Neighbor

How slot machines are secretly designed to seduce and destroy you, and how the government is in on it.

Second Season Arts Preview

Pyramid Scheme

A Drexel professor has some concrete answers about how the pyramids were built.

Prepare for the Best

A guide to surviving — and thriving in — Philadelphia's new green future.

Fearless Factor

Strawberry Mansion crooner Jazmine Sullivan makes the jump from Black Lily prodigy to Grammy phenomenon.

Coatesville is Burning

In 2009, there's been a rash of arsons in this small Pennsylvania town. And the fires keep happening.

Olney the Lonely

Peering through the kaleidoscope of one of Philly's most diverse and overlooked neighborhoods.

They See A Darkness

Inside the world of the Quay brothers, animation's masters of the macabre.

Snare and Tear

Local improv drummer hits YouTube daily.

Believe it or Not

Meet the reluctant face of Kensington's radical Christian movement.

It's a Jungle Out There

Will your favorite indie book store survive or be swallowed whole?

School Ties

Two education docs feature local instructors asking their kids to think outside the box.

Do You Want More?!!!??!

The Champs Return

The Style Issue

What is Philadelphia style?

Riding Dirty

Kayaking through the dead center of Philadelphia.

Lush With Cash

Can e3 put the green back in banking?

City Employees

Who They Are, What They Do, What They Make

In Bloom

Philly's neighborhood food co-ops are dreaming big.

The Impossible Dream

How an NYC theater luminary and a Center City holy man brought Quixote — and a cast of pro and homeless actors — to a Broad Street church.

Ultimate Summer Fun Guide 2009

There's something to do every day.

She's On A Mission

T. Desiree Hines will change the way you think about trans Philadelphia.

Biketopia

How to make Philly a cyclist's paradise.

There's a Book for That

This summer, read what you need when the time is right.

What Does It Take to Make the NBA?

And does Dionte Christmas have it?

The 10 Best Cheesesteaks You've Never Had

Let our expert expand your grease-stained horizons.

Soldiering On

Meet the people who fought — and continue to fight — our wars in the Middle East.

Oh, Baby

QFest goes family-friendly with a slate of gay parenting movies.

Steamrolled!

The soccer stadium barrels its way into Chester.

Gimme What You Got

Brash and ballsy MC Amanda Blank is here to take what's hers.

Little Kid, Life Sentence

Pennsylvania has more juvenile lifers than any other state in the union. Stacey Torrance knows. He's been in jail since he was 14.

The Sound and the Glory

Jazz Drum prodigy Justin Faulkner is ready for the big time.

Strip Search

Philly: What do your comics say about us?

The Secret Lives of Artists

Eight local artists tell us how they pay the bills.

Too Cool for Shul

Rabbi/band leader Menachem Schmidt has seen Philly's Lubavitch community grow to new heights. But is its progressive orthodoxy too good to be true?

One Less

Four choreographers imagine a world without [fill in the blank].

No Justice, No Peace

One of the longest-running and last-surviving anarchist newspapers in the country, West Philadelphia's The Defenestrator continues to deliver the news nobody else sees fit to print.

Close for Comfort

Salon culture is on the rise as local art lovers make a case for intimacy.

City Paper Choice '09

We Can See For Miles: The Big Vision Issue

Living in a Box

Welcome to the Welcome House (or: How Design Philadelphia will reinvent the city).

Children of the Sword

How one man sired a legion of Philly freaks.

Magic Words

How Maurice Sendak unleashed a multimedia monster with 10 little sentences.

Melody Gardot

In the studio with Philly's secret jazz superstar.

The Milkmen Cometh

From the barely edited journals of Rodney Anonymous

Top 20 Spectrum Moments

The Building Wanted Blood

Invasion of the Body Slammers

How South Philadelphia became the center of the alt-wrestling universe.

The Man Who Brought Philadelphia to Its Knees

The SEPTA strike, according to Willie Brown.

A Voice For The Fallen

One man's quest to memorialize the 4,600 gay men who died of AIDS in Philadelphia.

Hack The Holidays

Your hands-on, screen-printing, bath-bombing, book-binding DIY gift guide.

The Rehab Wars

Can a radical nun and a house full of junkies save Philadelphia from drug addiction?

The Future is Now.

In 1959, planner extraordinaire Edmund Bacon imagined that in 50 years, "no part of Philadelphia is ugly or depressed." What does the next half-century have in store?

Top 21 Albums of 2009

The best rock/pop/hip-hop albums of 2009

Death By Oboe

Fiction Writing Contest '09 Winner