Philadelphia City Paper :: Editor's Letter

Editor's Letter: Waving the Red Flag

When I first set foot in City Paper 's offices as a 22-year-old in 1995, I was hoping to secure a gig as an unpaid paste-up intern in the art department. Back then, newspaper pages weren't sent to the presses via PDF; they were printed out, run through a machine that coated the back with hot wax, and affixed to cardboard flats. It wasn't rocket science, but fingertips unfazed by an occasional dip in molten paraffin came in handy. Just out of La Salle University where I'd endured the same dangers as editor of The Collegian, I was dying to get a crack at pitching CD reviews to the staff of what felt like the coolest publication in the world.

Despite guaranteed editorial internships at other publications, I jumped at art director Jen Linden's offer. I saw it as my opportunity to learn how the paper worked, and to rub elbows with the paper's big four: David Warner, Neil Gladstone, Margit Detweiler and Howard Altman.

When, in 1996, I was offered a job as a $17,000-per-year editorial assistant/de facto receptionist, I'm pretty sure I did a flip. I've held a lot of positions since. Music editor. Special projects editor. Web editor. Senior editor. Editor in chief of City Paper was a title I wasn't sure I was ready for in 2008, and it's been the one with, by far, the most headaches. But all those Advil moments were offset by the exhilaration of getting to lead this staff and this paper through, as the Chinese proverb goes, some incredibly interesting times. But of all the honors, perhaps the biggest has been having a chance to talk directly, in this space, to CP's readers.

David Warner, who was managing editor when I started, had a saying. Whenever the staff would debate whether we were getting too deep or brainy he'd say, "Never underestimate City Paper readers."

It's been a rare gift to come to work all these years to put out a product for people who think about the city. I've always thought of City Paper as a community paper, one for people for whom living and working and playing in Philadelphia means something, for whom being in the thick of i...

Editor's Letter: Cliff Jumping

Had I decided to turn in a few minutes earlier, I'd have missed it all.

It was a Facebook post by my friend Andrew that caught my eye as I was about to close my laptop for the evening. "So nice to have Cliff Lee back in Philly," he wrote at two minutes past midnight.

Weird, I thought: Is ol' Clifton Phifer in town for an event? Killing time on a layover en route to New York for some kind of LeBron-esque announcement about where he's bringing his talents? Dropping the puck at a Flyers game?

The truth was the kind of shocker that, in a world filthy with pundits and a media landscape dominated by strategic leaks, just doesn't happen these days. While everyone was convinced that the free agent left-hander was headed one of two places — The House that Ruth Built or Deep in the Heart of Texas — Lee called an audible. By deciding to sign with the Phillies for less money and fewer years than either New York or Texas were offering, Mr. Lee has, in essence, created a seismic shift — hell, he's warped space-time — in this city, probably permanently.

There are at least three reasons.

One: In finally reversing his greatest folly (no, not the Raul Ibañez contract), GM Ruben Amaro Jr. has emboldened the chattering columnist class, who excoriated last offseason's flip of Lee to Seattle for prospects as the follow-through of dealing prospects to Toronto for Roy Halladay; they will told-you-so this move ad infinitum — or at least until the Phils' new four-headed beast of a starting rotation hits its first bump in the road.

Two: No one can ever believe what the organization says about money again. Trading Lee last year was, at least according to some reports, about money. Trading for Roy Oswalt required Houston to pay part of his salary. Not signing Jayson Werth was about coin. Now, according to reports, Amaro "wasn't going to lose [Lee] over $5 million." The Phillies play baseball, but their owners run a mint.

Three: Remember all those single-minded, almost troll-like commenters? The ones who, even after Oswalt was added to the fold, never let go of the idea of Lee no...

Editor's Letter: Submit To the Comics Issue

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For more information on submitting to The Comics Issue, visit citypaper.net/comicsissue.

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Editor's Letter: That's Dynastic

Back in March, I made a sort of outlandish prediction. As we tend to do around here, at the beginning of the baseball season on our news/opinion/sports blog The Clog, we have a little contest where staffers, friends and enemies tender their best guesses as to what the Phillies' final record will be. And most years, in much the same way the eternally Flyered-up Patrick Rapa boldly proclaims that each hockey season will end with the orange and black hoisting Lord Stanley's Cup, I, Brian Howard, no relation to Ryan Howard, predict that the Phillies will win some obscene number of games. And most years they come up way short.

This year, for the first time in my memory, the Phillies made me look like a low-roller, a granny playing penny slots. I wagered 96 wins, which struck me as optimistic for a team that'd settled in at around 92/93 and boasted an aging core. They brought home 97, topping the generally wildly over-optimistic predictions of the 7-year-old version of myself who still remembers Tug McGraw leaping from the mound at the conclusion of the 1980 World Series.

The going theory about what constitutes a dynasty in sports is that it doesn't matter how much you win if you don't win it all, often. To wit: Cincinnati's Big Red Machine of the early 1970s (four World Series appearances and two victories in 7 years) is a dynasty, and, say, the Oakland A's of the late '80s (three straight WS appearances but only one win) and the '91 to '05 Braves (14 division titles in 15 years and five World Series appearances but just one win) are not. Which means that, despite the fact that the Phillies are the first National League team to go to back-to-back Series since those Braves in '95-'96, the Jimmy/Chase/Ryan/Cole era of the Fightins has some work to do in the legacy department.

What do I think they're going to do? I think they're gonna win the whole damned thing, and handily (but that's what I always think). Though Game 1 against the Red...

Editor's Letter: Glossing It Up

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The summer of our discontent is over. So long, blast-furnace afternoons; welcome back, WFC-caliber Phillies. The beginning of autumn is about the time of year we like to tell you what to do. This week's paper is our annual Fall Arts bonanza, overflowing with features on the artists and events that will shape this year's season (check Holly Otterbein's profile on doomsday burlesquers Swellco & Swellco, Peter Crimmins' take on the "Art of the American Soldier" exhibit and Julia Askenase's look at local-ish lights The Walkmen).

But that's not the only guide we've got on offer. This week ushers the third annual City Paper Primer, a glossy little number spearheaded editorially by CP minister of moving parts Carolyn Huckabay, snapped by photog wunderkind Neal Santos and made all flash-and-dashy by BAJ Design. Primer was conceived as a tuck-it-in-your-tote/plant-it-on-your-coffee-table resource for newbies (hello students/houseguests/carpetbaggers), though we shoot to make it useful for Philadelphians of all vintage. The first half tackles the finer points of city living; the second is a neighborhood smorgasbord with the straight dope on what to do wherever you are.

"Putting together this year's Primer was like moving to Philly all over again," says Carolyn. "When I first got here in 2006, I was blown away by the amount of stuff there was to do I think it took me a year to feel like I'd conquered my own little neighborhood. In the Primer, we've cover...

Editor's Letter: Gimme Some Skin

On Sunday, hundreds (maybe even thousands) of cyclists will strip to their skivvies and beyond before embarking on the second annual Philly Naked Bike Ride, a casual, snaking tour around the city to raise awareness for, well, a lot of things. (See footage of last year's ride below.) One of the rubs (if one can comfortably use that term here) on the naked bike ride phenomenon is that its goals are ambiguous. The naked part appeals to nudists, anarchists and body-beautiful types (and, according to detractors, freaks and pervs); the bike part appeals both to advo†cates of cycling and proponents of reducing our carbon footprint; and the nude-on-a-bike part is a fleshy object lesson for drivers of just how vulnerable bicyclists really are.

Of course, the diffuse messages are part of what make the PNBR refreshing in a climate where political discourse can be shrill, predictable and redundant. (It's also refreshing in a climate where temperatures have been unseasonably high.) Nothing like a big, throbbing mob of naked cyclists saying, essentially, "We're here, we're naked, and we'll leave it up to you to figure out why."

I've been lucky enough the last two years to be allowed to sit in on (clothed) meetings with the facilitators — they actually eschew the "organizer" tag because the ride, they say, belongs to the riders. (To do the whole full disclosure thing, I've hung some posters, distributed some fliers and voted on issues.) Last year's ride ...

Editor's Letter: Cheerio

Michael T. Regan

Andy Dyson in 2007

At the end of August, Philadelphia will lose a rock.

U.K. native Andy Dyson, the executive director of Neighborhood Bike Works who's spent the last 27 years here, will be moving to Louisville, Ky. (his wife, Moira O'Keeffe, is taking her shiny new Annenberg Ph.D. and beginning a teaching gig at Bellarmine University). I rang up Dyson, who through NBW has been empowering youth through cycling since 1996, for a few parting thoughts and ended up on the phone for 45 minutes.

"I'm stunned by the fact that I'm leaving," he said. "No one should ever leave. On a very deep level, human beings are not supposed to leave. We're supposed to stay in the same place with the tribe we grew up with. Obviously our lives are not like that now. ... I'm going on to wonderful things, and I'm very excited about it. But there's something viscerally wrong about it."

Not surprisingly, Dyson's feelings about Philadelphia are complicated. He's been here since 1983 and lived through some of the city's worst moments. But he's always recognized the gritty, can-do spirit. "We're in a society where they really gave it a shot by creating this nation. They set in progress, in an imperfect way, the Democracy which we really do enjoy. It's not perfect, but I'm still very proud to have lived here where that happened, where people are trying to make things better all the time."

Dyson laments that "we're still in a country where corporate interests and money rule more than the people. [NBW]'s mission is not to combat that, but I think that if people are riding bikes, they're doing something which is protecting the environment and being gentle to their fellow citizens, and I think it's a perfect thing for Philadelphia b...

Editor's Letter: Beer Me

It's been a few weeks since I've written in this space. Excuse me while I shake off the sand and lean on that time-honored columnist's crutch — what I did on my summer vacation. I'm coming off seven carefree days of reading, World Cup soccer and Dogfish Head beer down in Rehoboth.

The reading: On a stony stretch of coast where the sun was hot and the water was ice cold, reading was the order of the day. I'd lugged a stack of books to the beach, but the most engrossing, and eerily timely, was Zeitoun. Dave Eggers' mid-2009 nonfictioner about a Muslim-American man's Herculean trials and heroism during and after Hurricane Katrina was, not unlike Eggers' What Is the What, impossible to put down. I devoured the inspiring/harrowing tome in three days. Yes, I was late getting around to it, but the timing, as Louisiana battles yet another heartbreaking stretch of staggering devastation, was sadly poignant. Though a hurricane and a massive oil spill are different kinds of disasters, just as panic and paranoia set the stage for gross miscarriages of justice in the storm's wake, the censorship of images and information from the cleanup efforts further threatens a region that's already plenty threatened.

The drinking: I've long admired the handiwork of Dogfish Head's Sam Calagione. While reporting a story in 2000 on the area's burgeoning microbreweries, he got me so hammered I could barely see, let alone take notes. DfH's flagship beers, the 60/90/120 minute IPAs, the ancient ales, the delicious seasonals (including the Drew Lazor-approved Festina Peche), the velvet hammer that is World Wide Stout, are fairly well known, but a trip to the brewpub on Rehoboth Avenue is like a pilgrimage to Candyland for beer geeks. I imbibed no fewer than nine beers I didn't know existed (including the brand-new GrainToGlass aged on surfboard cedar and the just-kicked Stop the Spill ESB, for which $1 from each pint sold went to the National Audubon Society) — and I'd been here last year. Now, as I quaff a glass of Fernonbrau Rye Br...

Editor's Letter: Reusefulness

For this week’s Summer Book Quarterly, I reviewed Mark Frauenfelder’s excellent Made By Hand: Searching for Meaning in a Throwaway World, and the book’s been rattling around in my head ever since I put it down.

Frauenfelder founded the tech/culture blog Boing Boing and is the editor in chief of Make, the DIY magazine that teaches you how to turn VCRs into cat-feeders and bell jars into beehives. Frauenfelder loves the latest gadgets, but he also holds true to old-school beliefs like fixing old things rather than simply buying new ones.

Made By Hand is all about his own transformation from consumer to maker/fixer/figure-it-outer. Once the proverbial lightbulb went off in his head, Frauenfelder made a list of things he wanted to do himself: killing his lawn (and replacing it with a garden), making a still, carving wooden spoons, etc.
It got me thinking about my own to-do-it-myself list. Not that I had an actual list at the time, but if I’d had the forethought to make one, I’d have knocked a few things off in recent years: plane and install an antique door; brew beer; bake bread; brew sweet tea; grow vegetables from seed. Of course, as a relatively newish homeowner, there are about a thousand things I’d like to get done around my house. Some of which will require the dreaded HAE approach (hire an expert is the antithesis of DIY), but many of which demand the courage to screw it up on the first try. On my list: install a dimmer switch; reroute my downspout; preserve tomatoes; make pickles. But the thing that’s crawling around in my brain, night and day, is composting.

I’ve been toting around The Rodale Book of Composting for about a month now, waiting to find enough undistracted time to burrow into it. I got far enough in the last w...

Editor's Letter: Engulfed

I know this week's cover photo essay by Michael M. Koehler is not a local story. But the unfolding ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is important.

When Koehler, a longtime contributing photographer for City Paper, told us he was heading back down to the Gulf, we were intrigued. He'd met a group of shrimpers while volunteering in January 2009, and last summer began documenting their already struggling industry and waning way of life. Now these fishermen are being employed in the hard-to-see-as-anything-but-futile efforts to clean up after the gushing oil leak that threatens to put a nail in their livelihoods, as well as their rich culture, once and for all.

There's a lot of ink and blame being spilled in the aftermath of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, as Jeffrey C. Billman breaks down. But underserved are the stories of the people who stand to suffer more immediately from what is only the latest in a series of catastrophes on Louisiana's Gulf Coast.

Koehler arrived on May 23 and shot through May 28.

"There was chaos down there, like an underlying tension of people needing to do work, to do anything," he recalls. "So they did the work on the BP payroll. But if they took a second to think about what was really going on, there was this feeling of sadness and anger."

He was shooting in an environment that was not particularly welcoming of photographic coverage. "The press was not allowed in any of the work sites," he says. "I had heard stories of deck hands who had brought cameras out while they worked, that the Coast Guard was taking cameras and deleting photos."

I've got a gardening problem. I'm not talking about squirrels or slugs (though I have those, too). Last summer, I told you about the modest little garden my girlfriend and I planted in our South Philly rowhouse's tiny backyard. We did what most people who dabble in the green stuff do: We bought a few herb plants from a garden center, dickered with easy things like peas and lettuce, got a tiny yield from a shockingly large broccoli plant and, long after we could have expected results, threw some tomato and cucumber seeds into the ground to see what would happen (very little). We were hooked.

This year, on what I imagine to be a typical greenhorn trajectory, we're going a little overboard. We charted our available space with graph paper. Bought a phalanx of $2 waste baskets from IKEA, drilled drainage holes and filled 'em with bags of good organic dirt. Then, armed with seeds from friends, seeds from an heirloom seed catalog, seeds from last year, we upped the ante, attempting to grow:

Seven types of greens: arugula, Bibb, looseleaf mix, alien-looking mesclun, fluffy Grand Rapids, Buttercrunch (aka sparrow bait) and a weird antleresque plant called peppercress.

Ten (!?) types of tomatoes: Cherokee Purple, Brandywine Red, Black Cherry, an odd variety called Let's clear the air, shall we? No kittens were harmed in the making of last week's Election Issue. But you already knew that, right? During the meetings in which we wrestled with how to make an unsexy cover package pop out of the box, we threw a lot of stuff against the wall. We considered "The Bawdy Politic." We pondered "Pol Position" and, briefly, "The Rep Schlep." We spent an inordinate amount of time debating the merits and demerits of "The Election Kool-Aid Acid Test." Yes, we are gluttons for puns around here. And then we hit on it: Election Kitty. The concept wed news editor Jeffrey Billman's long-unconsummated yearning to spoof National Lampoon's famous 1973 "If You Don't Buy This Magazine, We'll Kill This Dog" issue to art director Reseca Peskin's unsatiated desire to put her cat on the cover. (Res had waged a compelling but unsuccessful campaign to make the cover of last summer's Carolyn Wyman-penned Cheesesteak Issue an image of Zoe licking Whiz.)

Some folks loved it (CP contrib/pa2010.com blogger Dan Hirschhorn dubbed it "Best newspaper cover ever"). Some, eh, not so much. Based on numerous calls, letters and intertubez comments, some people didn't get the joke. Others got it but did. Not. Appreciate. It. Our readers, God bless 'em, rarely hesitate to let us know when they think we've crossed a line. Longtime reader Paula Spielberg called to say (quite politely, I'll add), "I don't think it was cute. Even though we know it's a joke, in these times when there's so much animal cruelty around, even the hint of it is inappropriate. ... I think you could have thought of a cleverer way of getting your point across." A reader named Marsha was less restrained, calling the cover "incredibly obnoxious. ... For people who are animal lovers, this is i...

Editor's Letter: DROP and Roll

When we decided to bite on veteran reporter Ralph Cipriano's pitch to investigate the city's Deferred Retirement Option Plan (that's DROP to you), it was with some apprehension: DROP's a bitch of a concept, a statistical bouillabaisse, a numerical goulash, an algebraic paella. So thick with figures, advanced investment concepts and pension plan mumbo-jumbo is the program, Cipriano enlisted the pro bono aid of actuary Joe Boyle to help him wade through the mire. When we finally sent "The Billion Dollar Boondoggle" to print April 22, we feared it might, like a lot of DROP stories in this city's past, fall with a thud, confuse a few people and roll away.

But we believed in the piece — which posits that DROP does not do what it was meant to do, costs taxpayers a bundle and further imperils the city's pension fund. With the aid of a dead-on cover illustration and charts and graphs, we tamed the monster. And inspired other media to get into the ring with DROP, too.

As Cipriano recounts in this week's follow-up ("I'm Not Going to Deal With That"), the Daily News, Inky and especially Fox 29 went gangbusters on the issue. We're particularly fond of news anchor Kerri-Lee Halkett's wonderful misspeak, "The Billion Dollar Boondoogle."

It was all, honestly, a bit of a surprise because, as Cipriano pointed out in a sidebar to the original story called "Corrupt and Contented" — a title cribbed from Lincoln Steffens' 1904 characterization of the city — Philadelphians have not yet gotten riled up about this the way the citizenries of San Diego and Milwaukee did over their municipal DROP pro...

Editor's Letter: Genius in a Bottle

Aakash Mathur (left) and Jay Parekh with the Hydros Bottle.

The April issue of National Geographic magazine was a 200-page single-issue monstrosity titled "Water: Our Thirsty World." While wading through it, this jumped out: Just 2.5 percent of Earth's water is of the fresh variety, and two-thirds of that is frozen (and increasingly melting into the ocean) while desalination of salt water remains expensive.

Here in Philadelphia, nestled between two rivers and blessed with a top-notch water department, we take water for granted. But access to fresh and, importantly, drinkable water is perhaps the most distinct divider between prosperity and poverty.

Two Penn grads have a small idea they hope will make a big difference. Aakash Mathur, 22, and Jay Parekh, 23, were at the GoGreenExpo in Oaks last weekend showing off a little marvel they call the Hydros Bottle. It is, simply, a water bottle that's also a filter. But unlike a Brita, which takes forever to do its dirty work, Hydros filters almost instantaneously. Without getting too technical, the duo (Mathur graduated from Wharton; Parekh studied engineering) created a filter with more surface area to do the job more quickly. "That was a priority for us," says Mathur. "Part of our proprietary system comes from our use of filtration pellets," Parekh adds.

The long citywide nightmare is over. With the trade of Donovan McNabb to division rival Washington Racistnameds for a couple of draft picks, a whole decade of the Eagles being merely really good has come to a merciful end. After 11 seasons, nearly 5,000 passes, 82 wins and, of highest import, zero Super Bowl rings, the most dysfunctional relationship in Philadelphia — that between No. 5 and his coach, Andy Reid — has come to an end.

This is a moment that's seemed both pre-ordained and eternally unlikely, each disappointing season followed by assertions that the quarterback Reid hitched his hopes to back in 1999 would remain so. No more. No more! As our sporting fool award-winning sports journalist E. James Beale wrote on Jan. 14, Reid and McNabb, while awesome individually, together produce an effect pharmacologists call "synergism" — when two drugs' negative effects "exacerbate the problems associated with the other. Here two plus two can equal five — or 500."

Beale had already filed this week's column when the "Easter surprise" broke — on the eve of No. 34 Roy Halladay's pinstriped debut. So we caught up with Beale for his take on the biggest 24 sports hours since Brad Lidge threw strike three.

"They'd come to the point, with all the talk, where it was going to be really hard for [McNabb] to come in and be the starting quarterback," figures Beale. "But they got good value [for him]."

As to the idea that it was folly trading McNabb to a team the Eagles will face twice a year, Beale is pointed: "I've watched him in enough big games to say I'm not afraid of him in big games. I wish him the best for 14 games a season."

It reminds me of one of our favorite jokes from the Bell Curve, one that neatly sums up McNabb's tenure. Originally published Nov. 17, 2005: "Eagles suffer last-minute loss to the Cowboys on Monday Nigh...

Editor's Letter: Fools, Gold

Oh man, you'll never believe it. This week we've got a profile on a hardcore liberal who believes his staunch progressivism is going carry him all the way to the governor's mansion! We've got an investigation of a police commissioner who apparently doesn't think Philly has a police discipline problem! A story about a group that thinks it can turn Philly into an indie film mecca! A review of the city's newest food craze: OCTOPUS BALLS! And the main feature in our Book Quarterly is about how people like poetry! Again!

Hooooooo boy! April Fools, right?

Actually, after a minor internal debate (and, OK, desperate pleas from our publisher) over whether we should seize on our April 1 pub date this week, we forewent discussion of that time-honored journalistic tradition: an April Fools issue (much to Patrick Rapa's eternal chagrin). Instead, we ended up with a lineup of stories both strange and true.

For starters, we've got poetry. You probably thought that verse was good and dead after people like Henry Rollins began calling themselves poets and shouting their shit with neck veins a-bulging. Yet poetry has weathered the storm, and, says A.D. Amorosi, who's been composing his own brand of dada word puzzles in his Icepack column since the Tristan Tzara days, Philadelphia is no longer trying to stab its poets or put cigarettes out on their faces. Buttressed by CA Conrad, Frank Sherlock, Ish Klein, Sonia Sanchez, Thomas Devaney and more, there is, once again, a thriving poetry scene in Philadelphia. Weird, right?

Or consider the strange tale of the four guys vying to be the Democratic nominee for Ed Rendell's seat, not one of whom seems to have a puncher's chance against each other, let alone against Republican Attorney General Tom Corbett. In the first of our Candidates Anonymous series on this gang of low-profile would-be-govs, staff writer Holly Otterbein Got an e-mail from my pal Alex, publisher of Grid and the baseball fanatic I was sitting next to at Citizens Bank Park when the Phillies clinched their second straight NL pennant last October. The message said, essentially: "I'm so busy, I don't even know when opening day is." Baseball season (the Phils open their schedule in Washington against the Nationals April 5) snuck up on me, too. I'm generally one of those nutbag fans who geeks out poring over organizational depth charts all winter. And yet this season, I've been pleasantly oblivious to what's happening down in Clearwater. It probably has something to do with the two straight World Series appearances. Because you don't tend to lie awake nights fretting over whether your team is good enough to become a dynasty the way you do when your team hasn't won anything in years. But I think this malaise stems mostly from the fact that not a goddamned thing is happening — at least nothing particularly interesting is happening — at the Carpenter Complex this year.

This is not a bad thing. Sure, Roy Halladay's new in camp, but he's a stone-faced straight shooter (read: boring). Placido Polanco's new, but he's also old (and he's always been boring, too). With every job in camp, save for last man in the rotation and last men in the bullpen, having been decided in January, Phillies camp has been a snooze — in a way that Yankees fans of the late '90s can probably appreciate. Playoff-tested professionals quietly going about their business in preparation for a seven-month battle of attrition doesn't make for great headlines, but for fans who'd endured the early-year foibles of Darren Daulton and Lenny Dykstra (the drunk car crash in 1991) and Robert Person (who was hog-tied in the back of a police car in 2001) and Brett Myers (a veritable stupid magnet), this calm, cool, collected camp is a welcome respite.

For those wishing for a more eventful spring, consider the Mariners camp, where last year's Phils ace Clifton Lee has been: suspended for the season's first five games after throwing at someone in a meaningless spring game; sidelined ...

Editor's Letter: Oh Ale No

Something pretty amazing has happened over the last decade here. Philadelphia, once the home of Schmidt's, has morphed into a world-class beer town. And I'm not saying that just because there are now breweries, and bars that serve great beer, and thousands of people who love it. There's no better evidence of Philadelphia's reinvigorated standing as the East Coast beer capital than that each year during Philadelphia's now-sprawling summer Beer Week, breweries from far and wide will send kegs and sixtels and firkins of new and rare beers to Philadelphia. And we will go nuts for it.

It's one of those priceless, unquantifiable economic/cultural developments. Which is why last weekend's Philly Beer Weekend (a warm-up for the big June bash) was troubling. The Bureau of Liquor Control Enforcement raids on three Philly beer bars and a distributor earlier this month — during which officials confiscated beer they believed had not been registered with the state — cast a pall over the Founders Brewing Co. night at the South Philly Tap Room where I found myself Friday. There were plans, as often happens at these things, for Michigan-based Founders to send a keg of something super-rare. In this instance, it was to be Kentucky Breakfast Stout, which, as per the brewery's Web site, is "an imperial stout brewed with a massive amount of coffee and chocolates then cave-aged in oak bourbon barrels for an entire year."

That special-occasion keg never made it to tap, because the SPTR was understandably freaked out over a possible crackdown. John Longacre, who owns the SPTR, as well as across-the-street café/would-be bottle shop Brew (and is president of the Philadelphia Bar Owners Association), admits that the SPTR pulled several Founders kegs, as well as offerings from other breweries, over concerns that they might not be registered.

"We had to get rid of it," says Longacre. "We play by the rules and whatever we perceived to be unlicensed, we immediately took off and sen...

Editor's Letter: Pie Fight!

While cramming to get up to speed on the Oscar contenders last week (I failed), I caught Quentin Tarantino's revisionist, Nazi-killing carnival of blood, Inglourious Basterds. It's a whopper of a film and, as CP's Sam Adams astutely surmised in his August review, "It's too much and not enough all at once." It's got two incredibly gripping plot lines, neither of which is fully explored.

I'll not spoil the ending other than to say that Tarantino plays fast and loose with der Führer. Which is, sadly, sort of en vogue these days. To wit: I spent Monday morning in the press section at Arcadia University as President Barack Obama addressed an extremely friendly audience while drumming up support for what is shaping up to be his administration's bellwether legislative cause: quagmire of quagmires, health-care reform.

I, like most of the assembled press corps, was furiously Tweeting the event. My own updates get picked up on my Facebook wall, to which about 1,000 people from various points in my past are privy. An old high school friend glommed onto my characterizations of the speech, and the audience's fervent reaction (this is what Facebook is for, no?).

At one point, I found it amusing that BHO's off-hand reference to the oft-derided single-payer system became an inadvertent applause line, and I wrote: "Ref to 'gov't run health care system' gets big applause." To this, the aforementioned old classmate, whose politics ... well, let's just say they're vastly different from my own ... dryly noted that dear ol' Hitler himself had proposed government-controlled health care in his run for Chancellor.

This, of course, is flagrant reductio ad Hitlerum, the ad hoc logical fallacy under which elective democracy is also an inherent evil. As another Nazareth High alum pointed out: "Five-yard penalty and repeat of down. ... Once...

Editor's Letter: Aftershocks

When we arrived in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic, two Fridays ago, weary from iteration six or seven of Philly Winter Flu/Cold 2010, we were expecting a lively Latino getaway that was part salsa-fied bombast in the ebullient capital, part deep-chillax in the sleepy little beach town of Las Terrenas on the Samaná peninsula (where, in the 1800s, many blacks from Philadelphia settled).

We booked our midwinter shot of Vitamin D a few days before the earthquake devastated Port au Prince in neighboring Haiti. (We looked into volunteering, but lacked the requisite experience.)

On its face, life in Santo Domingo, some 150 miles from the flattened Haitian capital, goes on unencumbered. I speak embarrassingly rudimentary Spanish and understand nothing spoken by an actual speaker of Español, so it's possible every single person in the capital was speaking only about the recovery efforts to the west, but that seemed unlikely. There were reminders, however. The maid at our hotel, the charming Casa Doña Elvira, was a young Haitian with whom we could communicate only in French. The hotel was giving part of its proceeds to Haiti relief and accepting donations.

And I suspect they were discounting or offering gratis the rooms of the myriad Médicins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) workers who were using Santo Domingo as either a point of embarkation or a weekend respite and were milling about the hotel's small patio pool our entire stay.

Though Haiti and the Dominican Republic are, to borrow a George Bernard Shaw-ism, two countries separated by a common island, there are Haitians everywhere you look in the DR: selling art, working in restaurants, manning hotels. When I asked Michel, the effusive concierge at our Samaná hotel, where he hailed from, his smiling eyes turned pained as he said "Haiti." (My response — "oh, things are ... tough there" — was, yes, a gigantic understatement.)

Though the DR fought a war with Haiti for its independence — the 166th anniversary of which was celebrated on Feb. 27, the last night of our stay — and the country is genuinely proud o...