Bus to Hitman Plaza

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This bus route runs into deep South Philadelphia, and the bus’s errant signage will draw a wry chuckle from anyone who knows South Philly’s history as a center of mob activity and the site of a number of mob hits in the 1980s and 1990s.  Within three months of my arrival in Philadelphia in early 1981, two mob murders occurred and were front-page news at the Inquirer, where I was working. One of the victims, Philip “Chicken Man” Testa, was blown up on his front porch, a twist that later showed up in the opening line of Bruce Springsteen’s song “Atlantic City.” 

I’d think twice about boarding a bus with this destination sign! The bus was going south on 8th Street near Arch. (South Philadelphians will recognize it as the No. 47 bus to Whitman Plaza.) h/t to KL, who spotted it about 8 a.m. I checked the schedule and caught it on the loopback nearly 3 hours later.

To Market, to Market . . . for 125 years

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The governor, the mayor and a congressman turned out February 22 to help the Reading Terminal Market launch its 125th year. From left: Gov. Tom Wolf, U.S. Rep. Dwight Evans, Mayor Jim Kenney, emcee Patty Jackson of WDAS radio, and Anuj Gupta, general manager of the marketplace.

 

The opening day of the 125th anniversary celebration was dubbed 1893 Day, with period costumes. (Though a sharp-eyed historian noted that not all of the costumes were true to the late 1800s!)

 

 

Hunter & the Hunted, Washington Square Park

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This hawk was taking a breather in a tree after having dispatched a squirrel below. After a short time it returned to its meal.
In a grim if comical (to humans) routine, two or three squirrels in the tree kept a nervous eye on the hawk and maneuvered to better positions. The squirrel here had been on a branch below the hawk but moved to the trunk and discreetly climbed to the presumably safer branch above. You wonder if they knew they were fairly safe, given that the hawk already had its meal in place. Fortunately for them, hawks don’t bury squirrels the way squirrels bury acorns.
After sitting in the tree for several minutes, the hawk returned to the squirrel. Possibly wary of the attention we were giving it, it eventually grabbed the eviscerated rodent in its talons and flew to the other end of the square.

Dickens Festival

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The Dickens Festival in Narberth on December 3 drew thousands for an afternoon of entertainment, seasonal food and drink, and a taste of what has become one of the town’s richest traditions. The scavenger hunt that features children tracking down characters from A Christmas Carol kept parents and kids alike on the run and more attendees than ever seemed to get in the spirit by dressing in Dickensian garb.  

Rick Nichols, longtime Narberthian and Philadelphia dining sage, reprised his role as Scrooge, to the delight of adults and children alike.

David Bromberg, luthier

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Cellos and other string instruments line the hallway leading to the workshop at David Bromberg & Associates in Wilmington, Delaware.

While in Wilmington, Delaware, for a few hours I stepped into the offices of David Bromberg & Associates, which opened downtown in 2002 after the city lured him and his wife with a good deal on a big brick building. I didn’t see the renowned bluesman and luthier, but it was a thrill to drink in the outer spaces, a temple of stringed instruments.  He got headlines last year when the Library of Congress said it would buy his collection of more than 250 fine violins. 

Bromberg in July at the XPoNential Fest.

Bromberg still tours with his band, whose latest album, The Blues, The Whole Blues and Nothing But the Blues, came out about a year ago.  He performed before an enthusiastic crowd at the XPoNential Fest on the Camden waterfront in July 2017 and came back for an encore, a rarity at that tightly scheduled event. 

My now fondest if somewhat contrarian memory of Bromberg is seeing him perform at the old Chestnut Caberet in the early 1980s on a night when from the stage he complained about taxi service in Philadelphia. As he told it in a way that went on way too long, he’d gone to the giant King of Prussia Mall that afternoon and had trouble getting a taxi to bring him back into town, a trip that takes a half hour or more depending on how bad the Schuylkill Expressway traffic is. It obviously bugged him that he could not just hail a taxi, and he went on and on about it as if it were a monologue in one of the extended songs he’s famous for. Anyone from the area knows that you don’t hail a taxi at the K of P mall, and he should have, too, considering that he was from Philadelphia originally. He’d been away too long I guess. 

What was evident from his July show is that his voice and musicianship are strong as ever, and today if he needed transportation he could just pull out his smartphone and summon an Uber.  

 

 

Gus’s Food Cart

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Gus does a robust lunch business at South and Fifth. He’s a great guy.

Philadelphia’s sidewalk dining may be the bane of restaurateurs who fret about the street competition not having the overhead expenses of a brick-and-mortar place, but it’s a distinct part of the city’s culture. It also distinguishes Philly’s street ambience from those less-colorful towns that lack a hefty and diverse supply of street vendors. Then there’s this: the number of vendors whose sidewalk success led to full-fledged restaurants has only grown in recent years. A recent example is South Philly Barbacoa, which started as a cart, moved into a small storefront in South Philly,  then evolved into El Compadre on South Ninth Street about the time it had won national praise from Bon Appétit magazine.