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Recycled Air

To celebrate Philadelphia's wildly popular 1980s show Dancin' On Air, thousands flocked to the spacious Adelphia Restaurant in Deptford, N.J., for a reunion party Friday.

Episode highlights played on screens around the club helped cast members and fans recount the glory days of a program created in the shadow of American Bandstand. Taped in town, it predated Dance Party USA, The Grind and countless teen skin showcases. From 1981 to 1987 on Channel 17, Philadelphia-area viewers got intimate with D'OA's featured dancers through their shimmying prowess as well as their personalities, revealed in small interview interludes. These characters, like "Princess," a female Prince wannabe, and Annette—a material girl one lucky star shy of a full Madonna impersonation—could not have become household names otherwise.

To its viewers, Dancin' On Air, originally hosted by Eddie Bruce, was like a daily after-school transmission of the hip life. To participants, it was life. In the days before the reality television deluge, bestowing regular people with celebrity was unheard of.

The reunion demonstrated how strong those old bonds are, as fans and show members just couldn't get enough, swarming center stage. They sang as one to "What is Love?" and got arm-swimmingly amped dusting off and busting out moves they've had Reynolds-Wrapped since the end of the '80s.

Old footage showed these people at their snap-bracelet, headband-wearing best, but now that they're all grown up, the show's producer Mike Nise had to cheat by reading name tags. Nise stood in the lobby, accessible to everyone. "These are my kids," he said, pausing to soak up the scene, "though they're not kids anymore."

Some are brokerage lawyers, others retailers, but practically all seemed united in their need for Nise to have not forgotten about them. Like kids on diving boards begging, "lookie mommy," they all approached Nise and awaited specific recollection. Nise's abilities for recall would impress Proust.

But Nise isn't satisfied with just this pushing-40 brood; the party served to generate excitement about plans for a modernized version of the show. Tom Adderly—who appeared on D'OA and whose wife may appear on a new one—said, "If Mike has his hand in it, it's going to work."

But not all shared Adderly's enthusiasm. "I don't think they should bring back the show with the music today," suggested Dede Sacco, who danced on the show for three years. "It's too nasty."

Could the show work in the aughts? Nise is convinced D'OA was not solely a time piece. But while viewers danced like waves on the ocean romance, it remains to be seen whether that almost-wholesome sensibility would translate to the "Shake It Fast" generation.

--Cory Frolik

Wither Wi-Fi?

What do you say to a conference of WiFi enthusiasts when your headliner has bailed and, in doing so, dropped news of a bill in Harrisburg that threatens to quash what they'd gathered in support of?

Such was the dilemma facing Inja Coates as she gave her opening remarks to a forum for wireless Internet in Philadelphia sponsored by her public media advocacy group, Media Tank.

In response to Mayor Street's much-vaunted plan to bring Wi-Fi broadband to the city's streets, about 120 came to the Free Library last week (Nov. 17) to hear Dianah Neff, who heads the project for the city, flesh out some details.

Coates told the crowd that Neff sent her regrets, and no replacement. She also shared what she'd learned from Neff's office: that PA House Bill 30 would prohibit municipalities from competing with commercial companies to provide street-level broadband. Coates encouraged citizens to start asking questions.

Not that there were any big players there to ask. According to Coates, the Mayor had been invited, along with T-Mobile, Verizon and Comcast. All declined.

The nine panelists who did show up—out-of-towners save for local community radio advocates from Prometheus Project—told those assembled about the street-level broadband services now operating in smaller cites, like Champaign and Urbana, IL, and Ocean City, MD.

Stay tuned.

--Bruce Schimmel

A Tree Grows, and Grows, in Philadelphia

Plants, save for the Venus flytrap, are thought of as passive entities. But the ailanthus tree, aka the "stink tree," is no shrinking violet. Its ability to grow upward of 70 feet, peel paint from houses and break water pipes and foundation walls, make it an urban menace, one that grows, quite literally, like a weed.

"It's not a weed. It's a fucking tree," contends South Philadelphian Robert Barnes. The 63-year-old retired city cop is to the ailanthus what video was to the radio star. He rides around in a black 1978 Chevy van with the motto "Kill A Tree" emblazoned in white on the side. He makes it his business to hack down the very tree about which Betty Smith wrote A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

In Smith's classic, the ailanthus symbolizes the perseverance of poor communities, growing without light or water; in Philadelphia, the tree is a menace for the same reasons. One tree produces "350,000 seeds a year. If 10 blow into a corner, nine turn to dirt, but one becomes the plant," says Barnes. "They are destroying Philadelphia."

Though Barnes is technically in the business of removing these nuisance plants, it's as much his passion. "I have a pension, a wife …" says Barnes of his financial situation. "Nobody [really] even has the money to hire me."

The last time Barnes was hired was in July and before that, February. Still, at $1,500 per tree, Barnes offers his services for a fraction of what professional tree removers ask. Why? He's on a crusade of sorts. It's his belief that the tree that tends to grow unchecked in impoverished areas adds to the problem of sprawling blight.

"These trees are turning ghettos into slums," says Barnes, who first became aware of the ailanthus problem when one of the trees threatened his own home's foundation. "I wish I knew what came first, the abandoned building or the ailanthus tree."

In fact, Barnes has worked gratis. "I [was] on a rampage. I was going to save the city. I would work five days for nothing. I bought the [chain] saw myself. I gave myself away to charity," reflects Barnes. But the job was too dangerous to continue doing for free. He has fallen out of a tree and suffered skin troubles related to handling the plant. The aggressive ailanthus produces toxins as a sort of defense against the establishment of other plant species. One of his workers required hospitalization as a result of these toxins.

And yet, Barnes has had little luck finding support for his cause. Everyone from the mayor to Jimmy Carter have turned a deaf ear to his letters and in-person pleas.

You have to wonder why. According to Joe Bones, safety and training coordinator for Bartlett Tree Experts, a tree-care company in Bala Cynwyd, Barnes has valid points. "It would have to be considered a problem tree," says Bones. "It regenerates so easily. It seeds itself in the smallest crack … and it just grows, damaging sidewalks, walls and properties."

Furthermore, "one of the tendencies [of the tree] is to resprout once it is cut," Bones continues. To truly rid yourself of the tree you must remove the entire root system.

And so Barnes will continue his Sisyphusean endeavor, taking business as it comes.

"People think you can hit a tree with an axe, and it falls down," Barnes says condescendingly.

--Cory Frolik