Sunday night at 8-ish, I drove around my East Passyunk neighborhood looking and looking and looking for a parking space and finally found one on the 900 block of teeny-tiny Fernon, between Tasker and Morris. This is not an unusual way to spend an evening.
The next morning, my car was gone — as were the rest of the vehicles on that block — replaced by monster street-destroying trucks, sitting there munching on the asphalt on which I'd treaded just 12 hours before.
Shit, the impound lot. I've seen Parking Wars. I don't want to go there.
So I called 311, our non-emergency info line. The busy, sorta annoyed 311 folks told me that sometimes the city "relocates" cars for paving purposes, and that if I called the Streets Department they could tell me where exactly my car was. They transferred me.
The Streets Department lady, while griping that the 311 people shouldn't have transferred me to her, was very helpful and looked up my plate number on various slow-moving computer screens till she eventually came to the conclusion that, since the relocation had just occurred, my plate probably wasn't in the system yet. I should poke around the neighborhood, and if I still can't find my car, call my local Police Department (holler, Fourth District).
So I poked. Up 10th street, down Ninth, in and out of the little streets I couldn't imagine a tow truck could even squeeze through. I even walked up and down the aisles of the Acme parking lot like a crazy person, but nada.
This morning I called the Fourth District, and the busy, sorta annoyed lady on the phone told me that the tow companies who relocate cars for paving don't record plate numbers, or where they put the cars. "It's probably in a five-block radius of where you parked it," she said. "Just look around for it, and if you don't find it, call 911."
Now, I don't really consider this an emergency emergency — I don't rely on my car, I just kinda want to, y'know, know where it is — so I'll be spending the evening combing the streets of South Philly, again, on what's starting to seem like a never-ending scavenger hunt for my silver Honda. (Which is, apparently, the same car everyone else in South Philly drives, too.)
Is this happening to other people? Is it taking you forever to actually find your relocated car? If the five-block-radius rule is true, then my car could be anywhere from Broad to Fourth, Federal to McKean. Wish me luck, and share your own relocation woes in the comments if you like.
Over the protests of Temple University students, notorious anti-Islamic and anti-immigration Dutch politician Geert Wilders is speaking on campus tonight.
A senior cleric banned women from wearing full-face veils at Al-Azhar in Egypt, one of the most acclaimed schools of Sunni Islamic teaching, on the grounds that the garments have nothing to do with Islam and demonstrate "radicalism."
The case of the Chinese Uighurs, a group of Guantanamo detainees who are still in custody even though they are no longer classified as "enemy combatants," will be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.
A Defense Department scientist is one of several federal figures facing espionage chargesafter he passed along classified U.S. satellite information to an FBI official pretending to be an Israeli intelligence officer.
That's right, kids. Almost half of Americans now support your right to get high as a motherfuckin' kite, down a bag of Doritos and watch Adult Swim. For comparison, more Americans now favor legalizing the devil's weed than oppose healthcare reform. Just saying. The real story here is the generational divide. If you're under 50, chances are you're pro-pot. If you're over 65, you're not. (The olds also oppose healthcare reform, on account of wanting to keep the gubmint out of their Medicare or whatever, but that's a discussion for another day.) In other words, stoners, be patient.
Why 22? The quiz creator doesn't explain the methodology, but it looks to me that the 1988 lineup contains some of the last vestiges of the Phillies' late-70s/early-80s glory years. Following the lineups through the years is an oft-painful remembrance of the ugly rebuilding years of the early '90s and the ugly rebuilding years of the late'90s/early aughts.
Without taking the quiz first, can you name the player that shows up most frequently, and one of the players who appears just once?
In anticipation of Eoin Colfer's talk tonight at the Free Library, we're giving away a copy of his just-out And Another Thing … , a continuation of the late Douglas Adams' sci-fi masterpiece The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Colfer's event (7:30 p.m., free, Free Library, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-567-4341, freelibrary.org) kicks off his U.S. tour — and as a special treat, the library will be giving out "Don't Panic" towels as well as special limited Hitchhiker's editions, while supplies last.
Said Colfer (whose first name is pronounced "Owen," FYI) of the Guide: "Being given the chance to write this book is like suddenly being offered the superpower of your choice. For years I have been finishing this incredible story in my head and now I have the opportunity to do it in the real world."
From the novel's press release:
When last we saw Arthur Dent, our towel-toting hero had traveled the length, breadth, and depth of known, and unknown, space. No sooner had he made his way home to (one rather pleasant version) planet Earth than he discovered that it was about to be blown up … again. Since 1997, Hitchhiker's fans have featured Arthur and friends dead, but now, in And Another Thing … , Eoin Colfer revives Adams' beloved characters using his own brand of humor to propel them through another intergalactic screwball adventure.
To win a copy, be the first to answer this trivia question:
In City Paper's Food section last month, we asked a local bartender to reimagine what Hitchhiker's interstellar cocktail?
The memes are flowing fast and furious here in Red October. In our inbox today: The Cliff Lee Clutch Bar, a send up of the Clif energy bar and an homage to the Phillies' postseason ace.
Still in search of a source of this bit of graphic noodlery, which has been up on the Cliff Lee Facebook fan page since. Oct. 7 but which no one seems to be taking credit for there.
What's the best Phillies meme of this post season?
Fifteen thousand people met outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art and walked along the Schuylkill to raise money and awareness for victims of HIV/AIDS, which afflicts Philadelphians at a rate five times the national average.
7 million Brits were diagnosed with "pre-diabetes" -- a condition of extra-high blood sugar levels, which makes someone twelve times more likely to get diabetes than a regular individual -- by the charity Diabetes UK.
Medical marijuana users and suppliers who conform to their state's law on the treatment will no longer be arrested by federal agents, Obama mandated in new policy guidelines that were sent to the Department of Justice.
New York City prosecutors were indicting the DNA profiles of miscreants in lieu of a real person, in rape cases where the actual criminal could not be identified but traces of DNA were left on the victim. So far, 18 DNA profile-indictments have led to the arrests of actual people.
A Philadelphia police officer was preparing to defend himself against charges of sexual assault after another officer caught him engaging in sexual acts with a prison inmate.
Friday: Ugh, it's gross to the max outside. Mama Omnibus calls movie night. Good thing the Philadelphia Film Festis this weekend.! Or keep warm with giggles with Jill Bernard's singing-dancing-hilarity extravaganza Drum Machine.
Sunday: Tattoos are a dime a dozen, but how many people can claim being tatted-up on board a Cruiser? Hop on the Landmark Olympia Cruiser for the Mighty Warship Olympia Tattoo Festival. Then strap on the lederhosen (is that German!?) for the Franconian Beers at Memphis Taproom. Firkins for all!
Our Book Quarterly Giveaway Week continues with A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book, which, as Janet Anderson points out in her City Paper review, ain't for kids — especially since it clocks in at a hefty 688 pages. Oof.
Byatt's novel, about Victorian idealists whose lives aren't quite as pristine as they'd like everyone to think, is already a best-seller in England and Canada, and was short-listed for this year's Man Booker Prize. (Her 1991 novel, Possession, is a Booker winner.)
These middle-class folks engage in the most advanced ideas of their era — socialism, Marxism, anarchism, anti-vivesectionism, theosophy, folklore analysis, women's rights, Fabianism. They celebrate a modern world of steamships, newspapers and electricity. Initially, it seems, they're living their utopian vision of human life to the fullest. But as the story unfolds, it becomes clear there's more afoot than individual righteousness. Family lines blur as parentage is questioned; relationships disintegrate as guilt, sex and greed enter the equation. This isn't a world opened up by enlightenment but real life, where people make bad choices, and connections between idealism and actuality lie only in the imagination.
To win a copy, answer the following trivia question:
What Roman general is the Fabian Society named after?
E-mail your answers to carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win. And check back with the Clog on Monday for a chance to win a copy of Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked.
Six workers at a nonprofit agency in Philadelphia that distributes state funds to low-income mothers and their children stole $375,000 from the program by creating checks in the names of fake recipients of the aid and redeeming them for groceries.
As World Food Day dawned this morning, the United Nations World Food Program announced a funding shortage was forcing it to cut back food aid to thousands of Bhutanese refugees living in Nepal, with bigger cuts possibly ahead.
The United States promised Pakistan $7.5 billion in aid over the next five years, after assuring the Pakistani government that the aid was meant as a goodwill gesture in the fight against the Taliban and not an effort to gain influence over Pakistani politics.
Enforcement of the Clean Water Act will be improved, executives with the Environmental Protection Agency promised yesterday, declaring that "if states are falling down on the job, we’re going to reverse the permits they've issued, and if they're not enforcing the law, we'll step in and do it ourselves."
The nine million gallons of wastewater produced each day by Pennsylvania oil and gas wells is going to be more like 19 million gallons by 2011, according to the state's Department of Environmental Protection, which is more than state waterways can possibly handle.
As the Philadelphia Parking Authority makes the transition from meters to kiosks, they're simply popping the meters off their poles.
This, of course, is bad news if you happen to have locked your bike to one of them, as parking meter poles, sans parking meters, are essentially useless, as a U-lock will just slide right off.
The meter/kiosk conversion happened on Second Street today, and on a now-meterless pole outside the Khyber, there's a taped-on sign that reads "Your bike is inside the Khyber."
According to Khyber tapminder/beer slector Jeremy Thomson, the bike, a purple and green Magna women's mountain bike remains unclained. There's a lock attached to it, so if you posess the key to that lock, you can head over to 56 S. Second St. and claim your bike.
Anyone out there lose their bike to the meter conversion?
Headlining our fiction review page in this week's Book Quarterly, City Paper lit critic Justin Bauer assesses Jonathan Lethem's latest novel, Chronic City, which follows the life of "handsome, inoffensive" Manhattanite Chase Insteadman. The author of such crazy-popular works as Motherless Brooklyn and The Fortress of Solitude focuses this time on the vapid lives of New Yorkers "wrapped in their own delusions, desires and lies." Burn.
Chronic City estranges Manhattan, literalizing recessionary anxiety by choking the financial district in sinister fog and setting an elemental beast loose on Second Avenue. Lethem's charming misfit cartoon characters, adrift in this landscape, repeat Pynchonian paranoia as stoned farce, caught in virtuoso drifts of authorial free-association. Each wraps himself tight in alienation or obsession, ensuring that even should their affairs work out, they're too timid to get their own pants off.
To celebrate the BQ, and in anticipation of Lethem's upcoming talk at the Free Library, we're giving away a copy to our faithful readers. Just be the first to answer this trivia question:
Chronic City's protagonist, Chase Insteadman, was a child star on what made-up sitcom?
E-mail your answers right quick to carolyn.huckabay@citypaper.net for a chance to win. And remember, keep watching the Clog through next week for more BQ giveaways and trivia games.
[UPDATE, 1:45 p.m.]: Congratulations to Clog reader Marcos, who correctly guessed that Chase Insteadman, Chronic City protagonist, starred in a fictional sitcom called Martyr & Pesty. Thanks to all who played!
WHYY's Elizabeth Fiedler reported yesterday that the city has thusfar received slightly more positive feedback than negative. In her report, she quotes Andrew Stober, Director of Strategic Initiatives in the Mayor’s Office of Transportation and Utilities:
We're hearing from drivers and neighborhood residents who are pleased with the bike lanes and they find traffic moving in a more orderly fashion. We're also hearing from some drivers who are complaining about cyclists behavior and who are complaining that they only have one lane to drive in.
Which leads me to wonder how many of the negative comments address the actual bike lanes and how many are just anti-cyclist.
My friend just sent me this link and I am baffled yet mesmerized. It's one of the most surreal things I have ever seen. Does anyone have any idea what this is about?
It's somewhat NSFW so be careful with the speakers.
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