When the 2007 primaries become part of political lore, the Bob Brady vignette will likely center around how he ambled into his Inquirer editorial-board meeting and declared, "I already know you're going to endorse Nutter."

So why this nugget, as opposed to when he came by our offices and declared that the Mummers qualify as one of Philadelphia's cultural offerings? For one thing, it's because it speaks to the party chairman's willingness to write himself off in the eyes of a media that wrote him off. (As in, let's acknowledge upfront that this is a charade.)

For another, his supporters already get a kick out of telling it. Which means it'll be retold until it becomes, "Brady rented a banner plane to circle 400 North Broad with the message and he flew it himself!"

And finally, it's because the dude called it proper.

What the story won't recount, however, is what Brady did the day the Inquirer endorsed Nutter. So let the record reflect that the affable, every-guy party chairman was at Ocean Harbour Seafood Restaurant in Chinatown for a fundraiser that evening. Which, coincidentally, was happening as the Brady bunch gathered at his Overbrook Farms home to celebrate his mother's 85th birthday.

Yet there the besuited congressman was, smiling and shaking hands as a dapper Asian chap he'd nicknamed "Jimmy Walnuts" led one fund-provider after another to the stage for their requisite "Photo with a Powerful Politician." From there, Brady noticed I was sipping a Tsingtao. Solo. To which he told his finance guy, "Don't let him drink alone." From which his finance guy gleaned that he should get a Scotch so bossman could join me. After which I realized Brady is my kind of guy.

Not because of drink selection, or because he demanded I stay at the table as hi...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/04/26/juan-ramos http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/04/26/juan-ramos One of this drinking life's simplest pleasures is stumbling across a new corner bar where one instantly feels comfortable. What makes it all the more pleasurable — though I can't fathom why, considering my love for any action — is when that new bar posts a sign declaring that betting on a game of pool is a crime punishable by ejection.

(CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Such was the setting a couple of Wednes-days back when I hit 17th and Fairmount streets to meet Councilman Juan Ramos, who's in the midst of his first re-election campaign. No, we didn't get tossed for wagering on billiards, but before getting into his pitch, it's worth mentioning that this was one of those bars with no name. Some people call it Jay's Bar; others, the 17th Street bar. I'll refer to it as the Deceptively Nice Tavern, with a fancy new wooden bar, complete with hoity martini glasses and toity $7 shots of high-end tequila, all in an almost-shaky-but-coming-up-quickly 'hood.

Blacks. Latinos. Whites. The place offered as good a cross-section of real Philadelphia as I've found in town, which, I suspect, is part of the reason why a candidate touting himself as the seven-day-a-week "Servant Leader for Philadelphia" picked it. Or, it might have just been because — as the non-drinker'd tell me after ordering a "Perry Air" along with backing me up another Miller Lite — before it became a case study in gentrification and shifting populaces, this is the neighborhood where the first influx of Puerto Ricans settled upon arriving in Philly.

H...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/04/19/maria-quiones-sanchez http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/04/19/maria-quiones-sanchez

It's hard to believe that, two months into the Cocktails With series, nobody had mentioned a rather important aspect of the looming City Council primaries. (Such is la vida political in a mayoral-election year.) When voters head into the booths, they'll decide which potential councilmembers will head the local redistricting efforts in 2010.

This has long been an important issue in the fightin' Seventh, which is not only home to the occasional political-corruption indictment (former councilmen Harry Jannotti and Rick Mariano) but also to absentee legislators (former state Rep. Bill Rieger, who discovered that jamming pieces of paper into statehouse voting machines leaves the impression one actually voted).

This is what Maria Quiñones Sanchez talks about as she examines a map of the district she'd like to lead. There's a nice big chunk of land down around Second Street, from Frankford along Hunting Park to beyond Mascher. Then, there are little broken nooks along Castor up to Grant. In some places, the district is as narrow as an intersection.

This makes for some difficult campaigning, what with both the distance a candidate needs to cover, and the pockets of Russian and Brazilian newcomers who aren't easy to connect with. But if Sanchez is intimidated, she doesn't show it as she polishes off a Corona quicker than I could drink one of the city's tastiest margaritas — at Tierra Colombiana Restaurant & Bar on North Fifth. In fact, the Latina candidate who bills herself as "the Right Leader at the Right Time" sees it as a noble challenge of sorts.

"They're facing many of the same issues as Latinos, with the language barriers in the schools, and wanted to get engaged in the process," she said.

Though she's often been lumped in ...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/04/12/sharif-street http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/04/12/sharif-street herbal tea with...

Things went a little differently during a recent sit-down with Sharif Street, the mayoral son and coffin-crooner's nephew who wants to be your next at-large councilman. In place of a cocktail came a cup of Bija double-ginseng tea and in place of a taproom, he and a handler met me at Govinda's, a vegan joint at Broad and South.

Well, sobriety made it all the more surprising that my ginseng-amped self walked away thinking: I've written some real nasty columns about his dad, but dude was engaging and made much sense, even while making the case that he's new blood despite his familial DNA having been in some capacity of power for 28 years. (I did, however, grab a beer and pair of shots afterward to confirm I wasn't roaming the desert on some of Guatelmalan-insanity-pepper-fueled hallucinatory trip.)

Granted, he emitted a sense of media wariness — as in, peeking at my notebook a few times as I scribbled his quotes — yet Street happily talked about being John's kid. Harking back to when he was 4 or 5 years old, he talked about a lesson learned early on: How to avoid getting hit by a brick. Which is an important thing to know when you're a black kid, during the 1970s, in the back of a pickup driving through South Philly to rally against charter change and looming gentrification. "And they were trying to hit us," he recalls. "What you have to do is get up against the wall, duck and stay down."

He never got hit, but he did get bit by the political bug. Engrained were the lessons learned from watching rich white people trying to throw them out of their homes and Rizzo's stormtroopers who "wanted to beat us up."

"We were complete outsiders then," he says. "I'm still amazed when I think about how we're not the outsiders anymore."

It's an interesting word choice, because there seems to be a grassroots groundswell crying to throw da bums out. Add Sharif's last name, and it's an easy leap to figure he has little chance. Wrong you'd be, says the candidate. At 33 y...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/04/05/david-oh http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/04/05/david-oh

Afew months back, aspiring legislator David Oh stopped by the office to share one of those big ideas he thought would remove the second word from "America's Next Great City." Though he was a few years removed from a failed City Council campaign, he couldn't fathom why people belittled his "24-Hour Philadelphia" proposal, in which a portion of town would be an around-the-clock entertainment district a la SoHo. "People resist the 24-hour area because it conjures up images of night clubs, drunken crowds and fist fights," he explained. "However, a city known for its distinct neighborhoods would benefit so much from an attractive area devoted to creative, innovative and artistic people. These are out-of-the-box thinkers, performers, professionals and entrepreneurs."

Back then, the idea struck me as odd because it was coming from the mouth of a Republican attorney and former assistant district attorney under Ed Rendell who served in the first Gulf War with a reserve Green Beret unit. Yet, as we kicked back at the grand opening of The Penthouse Lounge & Grille, sipping multiple Lagers and trying to converse as several scantily clad workers danced along a nearby runway, I was sold. But convincing me that people should have a place to gig at 4:30 a.m. is one thing; getting the rest of blue-laws Philly aboard is something entirely different. Oh yeah, he'll also have to figure out a way to knock off incumbents Frank Rizzo and Jack Kelly, too, which, even in a city allergic to his political party, won't be easy. (Oh's one of five party-endorsed candidates for the two GOP seats.)

One of those quick-to-laugh family guys, he's easily sidetracked into talking about the joys of soon becoming a father (his wife, Heesun, is expecting); you feel like you've known him for a while even if you haven't.

"I have to show voters that I am not only a person who has the right ideas to address the long-standing issues that have plagued our city," said Oh, who bases his anti-casino stance in large part on the fact that it'll decimate our ability to expand the ...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/03/29/marc-stier http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/03/29/marc-stier

So I'm sitting at the bar in McMenamin's Tavern, the Mount Airy mainstay to which you can take your ladyfriend without worrying that she'll think you're all low-class. (Much more than a taproom; much less than a Rittenhouse Square doucheteria.) Gazing at one of several flat-screen TVs while nursing the first Jaeger's Harp chaser, I get to thinking about the start of tomorrow's NCAA hoops tourney. Specifically, I'm kicking myself in the ass for picking UCLA to win it all, already envisioning the amusement-only prize drift away.

Then, the cellie starts vibrating, breaking me from this mental torture. The man I was here to meet, the affable Marc Stier, who will be on the cover of the next morning's CP for being one of a gaggle of "Re-Formers," is running late. Seems he's sick. Feverish. Run-down. Not all there. As I nod to the bartendress for another chaser, one thought fills my head: If dude gets me sick mere hours before vacation, dude won't be all happy to read about this interview. No. Dude will be subject to a borderline-unprofessional vendetta the likes of which haven't been seen since Nutter went all smoking-ban.

Well, dude showed up 15 minutes later, nattily decked out in the shirt and tie he'd sport to a ward-leader meeting he had scheduled later in the evening. And, despite shaking what I considered a potentially-germ-laden, Vegas-decimating hand, dude's in the clear. For one, he didn't saddle me with any hypothetical desert malady. And for two, he struck me as a unique specimen in the puppy pile known as the at-large City Council field.

While many newcomers are too bright-eyed to stand a chance once the vote's gotten out, this 51-year-old Temple University professor has nary a windmill at which to tilt. Sure, over an iced tea, Stier can spout reformer-ese with the best of 'em. Like when he says, "What's different today is that people are hopeful," or that Philadelphia needs "to move into the 21st century."

Sure, it's early. Eight years and a couple of months early, actually. But having broken out the magic Guinness-filled crystal ball at the Plough and the Stars the other night, the future became clear enough to make a declaration: I'm endorsing James Kenney in the 2015 mayoral race.

Who cares about not knowing 1) whether the American Empire will have crumbled by then; 2) if we'll have already ceded every last shred of civic control to the waterfront casinos; and 3) who else'll be running. Sometimes, you sense someone puts city before self. That's the feeling I had the night before Kenney drew a primo ballot position for the City Council at-large primary.

Well, it probably came earlier, when I realized that, despite having spent many years in Cesspool Hall and always being tightly linked to a political patron now under federal indictment, Kenney's emerged practically unscathed. Not, as he'll point out, in a being-named-in-an-indictment kind of way (which he wasn't). But despite tenuous ties, Kenney still has the respect of people all along the political spectrum. (Since you're wondering, he says, "I'm worried for him. Worried about him" — the "him" being Vince Fumo.)

As Kenney's fingers tapped the bar, feet bouncing and eyes wandering in a way that made me think, "Hmm, he really doesn't want to be here," I asked the question many seem to wonder. Why settle for council? Partly, he said, it was the wrong time (with a kid heading to college and another to high school, the demands would be onerous). The rest?

"It's a 24/7 intrusion into your personal life," he said. "You get no relief from it." Then, the hint dropped. "I'll be 48 in August. So, in eight years, I'll be 56. If I'm still here, God willing."

So the man's thinking about it. Go...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/03/15/bill-greenlee http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/03/15/bill-greenlee

It was the night the lights went out in Fairmount. OK, not all of Fairmount. Just inside Krupa's, where at-large City Councilman Bill Greenlee was getting used to the fact that the reporter/regular interviewing him had a Miller Lite and Jaeger instead of a notebook and tape recorder.

Before he could delve too deeply into the curious matter, Greenlee headed off into the back room to help the owner, a longtime friend, figure out whether a wire had shorted. Of course, he did so after he bought a round for the whole place. Bribery through boozery? More like neighborhood politics in action.

And therein lies the story of how a Fairmount guy who knows every neighborhood old-timer by first name became a city councilman who now must fend off the impression that he's merely the beneficiary of a ward-leader system that could well be a defining election issue.

It's also a story that, for the first time in "Cocktails With" history, required two sit-downs, thanks to one of the participants' super-sized buzz. With, ironically, the first candidate who said he hates "talking about myself."

Though the political discourse in the neighborhoods tends to be considerably different than that in the online message boards, fending off the ward-leader thing is nothing new. When he took over for David Cohen, the late councilman for whom he worked, it was duly noted that he was appointed by peers who likely recalled Greenlee's old house on Myrtlewood Street is where the governor has kicked off each of his political campaigns.

Then, and now, he makes no apologies for being an insider of sorts. After having a laugh about the unorthodox nature of the first meeting — there should have been an "s" tacked onto "Jaeger" — we caught up at the Ukrainian Cl...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/03/08/andy-toy http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/03/08/andy-toy

Andy Toy has a confession to make: He doesn't hit the bars all that much these days. But one late afternoon in early February, that had to change.

Thanks to his campaign manager, Toy became the first candidate to request an interview over cocktails. Considering that the man who aims to become the city's first Asian-American elected official lives near Logan Square, the Cherry Street Tavern would be the locale. So as the patrons lining the bar before 4 p.m. were treated to the jukebox stylings of Pantera, a suited Toy strolled in and suggested heading to the back room so he could be better heard.

With a pint of Yuengling in front of him, Toy put some multilingual campaign material on the table and got to talking in a painstakingly careful manner that quickly had him asking to go off the record at a record clip. Which, it must be pointed out, isn't conducive to a barroom chat. But I digress, for if you look at Toy's résumé, you might be inclined to make the argument that our leaders don't necessarily need to be dynamic quote machines to be effective. He's Councilman Nutter-esque, you might venture.

In the past five years as a program officer with the Local Initiatives Support Corp. (LISC), he's brought more than $2.5 million in federal funding to the city. He currently serves as chairman of both the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corp. and Free Schuylkill River Park along with, among other positions, advisory board member of the Community Design Collaborative. Meanwhile, his wife, Pat — with whom he has a 14-year-old daughter and 12-year-old son — is president of the Home and School Association at the Albert M. Greenfield School.

Suffice it to say, this is a civic-minded family. A civic-minded family, Toy makes clear, that's none too keen on our current leadership.

As for his campaign platform, there are six key areas: Ensure Public Safety, Economic Development, Education, Ethics, Environment and Equity. (He jokes that it took some linguistic wrangling to get public safety to fit into the "...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/03/01/queena-bass http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/03/01/queena-bass

When looooong-shot mayoral candidate Queena Bass responded to an interview request by suggesting we meet in the lobby of the Marriott Philadelphia Downtown, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Something along the lines of the crazy cat lady on The Simpsons, I guess.

This was based on the years of receiving unique fliers from the North Philly-bred activist who nearly culled 2,000 votes in the 1999 election. The ones that declared, among many other things, "The Philadelphia Television News Media has caused me emotional and financial hardship by not telling the TRUTH" and "This City of Brotherly Love needs to put LOVE into leadership."

Yep, couldn't wait to meet her. For, in a race dominated by suits and career pols, Bass brings something unique to the dais: unpolished femininity.

Here's the quick resume: Bass entered the public consciousness in the mid-'90s when, having been let go from her job at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, she set up shop outside with a bullhorn and racial-discrimination allegations. (The basis? She had more seniority and education than anybody in her office but, as the lone minority, was let go anyhow. A lawsuit, in which she represented herself, followed and ultimately went to D.C., where the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear it.)

By 1999, she decided to run for mayor, and got smoked. She tried again in 2003, but was thrown off the ballot. (Neither time was she permitted to debate, even by the League of Women Voters, she noted ironically.) Now, facing eviction from her Center City apartment (she blames Jefferson both for that and the lack of TV coverage any of her campaigns have received), she's digging in for Round 3.

"This time," she tells me after declining a cocktail while I ordered a pre-rush-hour Miller Lite, "I really think I have a good chance."

I f anything, Dwight Evans can pick a stage. In this instance, it's Ogontz Grill on the 7100 block of Ogontz Avenue in West Oak Lane. It's an off-the-beaten-urban-path enclave that could serve as a case study in civic reclamation.

Where the strip mall across the street once resembled post-helicopter Osage, it's now a bustling center of commerce with a high-end state store and a shiny-new DMV office. And thanks to this growth, just a couple of blocks away, a bank, when it recently opened, became the first financial institution here in decades. This is the scene visible through the windows of the Grill that was once a Church's Fried Chicken.

But as Evans, the district's state representative since he was 25, works the post-work crowd, the scene is right out of Tir Na Nog — well, if dozens of middle-class African-Americans packed Tir Na Nog after a long day at the office.

Here, he doesn't miss a table, for there isn't a table at which he doesn't know somebody. Looking dapper in a long winter coat complete with cream-colored scarf, he chats them up, and not in that forced I-could-use-your-vote kind of way. He's greeting old friends, and it's how he acts when we sit down in a dining room complete with art-lined walls and Stevie pining for his cherie amour through the speakers.

This, it's easy to tell, is exactly where he wants to be: in the midst of a neighborhood that he worked hard to rejuvenate, a place that he'd be well-served to show off to as many people as possible, for if he could do this on a citywide scale, it'd be hard to vote against him. Which is exactly what Philadelphia did in 1999 when, Evans is eager to point out moments after ordering a lemonade (which should never, ever be mistaken for a cocktail), clam chowder and crab cake, he...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/02/15/michael-nutter http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2007/02/15/michael-nutter

Suffice it to say, the good folks in City Paper's accounting department were none too pleased with the receipt from a recent Friday evening interview. But when you're the first of three mayoral candidates to 1) roll up on a "Cocktails With" interview sans handlers and 2) offer a toast to start the talk, a trio of $12 chardonnays is the least we can do. (Full disclosure: The interviewer's Guinness tally topped that by two — at a reasonable $6.50 a pop — making for a loose-tongued conversation during which a notebook never sat atop the fancy wooden bar.)

Such was the case with Michael Nutter, who's supposedly too smart and too buttoned-up to take over the second floor of City Hall from a man, and longtime rival, for whom he has nary a kind word.

Nutter made his way into the bar in the Ritz-Carlton Hotel's lobby around 7:45 p.m.; the smoking ban didn't come up until, oh, after 9:30 p.m. and when it did, I'm pretty sure he confirmed my stance that pro-ban advocates knew damn well that most taprooms wouldn't want to risk opening their tax books in order to get an exception. (For objectivity's sake, we'll pretend it didn't come up at all so as to give the ban's architect a fair shot.)

Nutter spent a good amount of time discussing why the current mayor's ego is destroying the city — the word "narcissist" came up, with emphasis — and how the press owes it to Philadelphians to investigate the smoke-and-mirrors resume of current front-runner Chaka Fattah, who, Nutter says, while boasting of bringing low-cost heating oil to Philly, fails to mention that he got it from Hugo Chavez.

If this guy's too buttoned-up — he does cop to thoroughly enjoying the Capital Grille scene — he does a hell of a job hiding it behind righteous indignation, like when I asked why he's so fixated on John Street. "He's there for another year, and so's the police commissioner," Nutter said. "Are we just going to waste an entire year? Are we just going to let the city rot away? They need to be held accountable."