Almost overnight, Willie Brown, the "bullet-shaped" — as Philadelphia Inquirer scribe Jeff Gammage described him — bombastic, unapologetic, strike-leading president of the Transport Workers Union Local 234, rocketed from obscurity to near-ubiquity in the worst way possible. Editorials mocked him. Columnists skewered him. Commuters cursed him. Online commentators made the above look like a fan club.

Brown didn't seem to mind; in retrospect, he says he wasn't paying much attention. The "most hated man in Philadelphia," as Brown christened himself, presided over a strike despite contract offers from SEPTA management that seemed, to many an angry, recession-stricken SEPTA patron, overly generous in the first place. He didn't flinch, he didn't back down and, for the most part, he didn't care. And he won. At least, he claimed victory. (The union will vote to formally ratify the contract Nov. 20.) He may be reviled. But Brown says he'd do it all over again, whether you hate him or not.

Since the union boss said so little to the press during the strike, we thought it was high time to find out why. On Nov. 12, City Paper sat with Brown for nearly two hours inside his North Second Street offices. In person, Brown comes across as affable, polite and 100 percent steadfast in his conviction that he did the right thing. While he occasionally waxed idealistic —allusions to Martin Luther King and the U.S. Constitution came up — his position was simple: His job is to get from SEPTA as much for his members as possible. Period. The end.

The following interview is not meant to be a fair and balanced look at the strike's merits. Nor is it an attempt to either lionize or vilify the union boss at the heart of it. Rather, it's a chance to hear a side of the story you probably haven't heard, straight from the proverbial horse's mouth, and edited only for clarity, space and grammar.

THE BUILDUP

The Transport Workers Union Local 234 threatened to strike at the m...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/11/05/color-guard http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/11/05/color-guard 1967-1985

Longtime Sixers (and Warriors) public address announcer Dave Zinkoff was known for his velvety bellow and clever score-keeping ("Two for Shue!" "Gola goal!"). After he died, Zink's mic was retired and his name raised high in the rafters.

1967-1995

Jovial TV/radio announcer Gene Hart was "The Voice of the Flyers," and the soundtrack to just about every Spectrum hockey highlight. His call of the 1974 Cup Finals still gives us chills.

1969-1996

Bodacious Kate Smith's version of "God Bless America" has become a kind of lucky charm for the Flyers. Smith died in 1986, but when her voice has opened a hockey game (live or recorded), the Flyers are said to be 77-21-4.

1972-1996

Dave Leonardi, aka the Sign Man, had something ready for every Flyers home game. After the Flyers beat the Russians, he summed it up thusly: "Bring on the Martians." Sign Man moved with the team into the Wachovia Center.

1973

Before he became a lovably nutty Flyers broadcaster, Gary Dornhoefer was a tough-as-nails right wing with the Broad Street Bullies. His 1973 OT game-winner against the North Stars at the Spectrum remains immortalized in bronze outside the rink.

1976

Kenzo bum Rocky Balboa lost in his Spectrum debut to reigning champ Apollo Creed, which is how million-to-one shots usually end up. The rematch, also at the Spectrum, came three years later with Rocky eking out a win.

1976

According to oft-confirmed legend, Flyers winger Reggie Leach scored five goals in one home playoff game against the Bruins while completely, utterly drunk. Alcoholism!

1976 and 1981

Bobby Knight and his Indiana Hoosiers won two NCAA titles at the Spectrum and they're not even from here.

1977

After fighting and getting kicked off the ice, Flyer Paul Holmgren and Bruin Wayne Cashman continued their fisticuffs in the no man's land between the two locker rooms, leading to the install...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/11/05/top-20-spectrum-moments http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/11/05/top-20-spectrum-moments

You could call it a bad omen that the roof blew off the five-month-old Spectrum during the Ice Capades in 1968, but I think the arena was just asserting itself. I mean, the frickin' Ice Capades? To paraphrase Jurassic Park: The Spectrum doesn't want to be fed — it wants to hunt. Sure, it could handle circuses and soft stuff like that, but it was built for the hard-checking Flyers and hard-dunking Sixers. It was the city's main arena during the heyday of big, ballsy arena rock. It was the loudest place in town.

My first in-person/non-Prism Spectrum memory is my dad taking me to see the Flyers versus the Russian Red Army in 1990. It wasn't quite as tense as the infamous bloodbath of '76, but the walls shook with chants of U-S-A and hilarious obscenities. American flags waved. Scuffles broke out in the seats. Fights broke out on the ice. Yeah, the Flyers lost, and Hexy didn't play, and we had obstructed seats way up in the nosebleeds. But the atmosphere was intense, insane, awesome.

Last week, the bloodthirsty and suddenly venerable old coliseum said goodbye with a series of epic concerts. Next year they're gonna blow it up. Below are links to our lists of the Spectrum's top moments in sports (by me) and music (by A.D. Amorosi who, legend has it, simply materialized from the ether during a Bowie show). Weigh in with your own at citypaper.net/spectrum.

TOP 10 SPECTRUM SPORTS MOMENTS

TOP 10 SPECTRUM MUSIC MOMENTS

COLOR GUARD: MORE (IN)FAMOUS CHARACTERS THAT LIT UP THE SPECTRUM

We're big Dead Milkmen fans here at City Paper — the punk rock legends provided the soundtrack to our awkward adolescence. And we're big fans of their frontman, Rodney Anonymous, too. Rodney cracks us up with his monthly Aid or Invade column (it's supposedly about world music), but we've been looking for an excuse to really turn him loose. When we heard that the Milkmen were officially back in the picture — playing shows, making new music — and blowing it out with a big Halloween bash at the Troc, we gave him a word count and set him free.

WARNING: SIDE EFFECTS MAY INCLUDE ...

There are a thousand reasons why I should have declined the offer to pen this piece, foremost being my firm belief that the only place where musicians should be encouraged to write is on bathroom walls. Sure, Nick Cave's And the Ass Saw the Angel is wonderfully ambitious, but it's also the exception that proves the following rule: "If there were such a place as hell, the waiting room to its lowest level would be well stocked with the literary efforts of Henry Rollins and Jewel."

I also don't want anyone to think that I'm writing this in order to shamelessly plug the concert. Honestly, I don't give a rodent of unusual size's ass whether you attend the show. The opening bands — The Tough Shits and Live Not on Evil — are truly great and there will be short films from the Secret Cinema, so if you leave right before we play, I'm sure you'll have a...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/10/22/espers http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/10/22/espers

It's clear from the first swift splash of cymbal and brisk strum of acoustic guitar: This new Espers record won't be the same old tour of the drone factory. The song is "I Can't See Clear," an upbeat waltz where the madrigal harmonies of Meg Baird and Brooke Sietinsons bob and weave in a playful cadence. On the wordless chorus, Greg Weeks' electric guitar briefly swells into a sinister minor key lick, but quickly releases the tension and returns to the serenity of the verse.

"That was definitely a purposeful decision," says Weeks of the brighter aesthetic on III, out this week on Drag City Records. "Not to say, all right, here's our four-minute droney, crazy kooky part of the song. Which you love, sure, but we didn't want to stereotype ourselves."

Espers' self-titled 2004 debut took cues from the '60s English folk of Fairport Convention and Pentangle, slowed it down like a 45 played at 33 1/3, and laid it atop airy ambiences. Two years later, the ethereal turned eerie on II, where the sound became thicker and more dissonant; the searing, intense "Dead King" uses an unusual blend of instrumentation (Omnichord, Doric transistored organ, singing bowls) to grip mercilessly onto a mechanical whir that, over many minutes, grows from bewitching to petrifying.

Nothing on the new album is that frightening. In fact, subtle touches like the wistful Theremin solo on "Caroline" and the softly plucked major-chord verse of "The Pearl" are so...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/10/15/maurice-sendak-where-the-wild-things-are http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/10/15/maurice-sendak-where-the-wild-things-are

Vilde chaya!" yelled Sarah Sendak, calling her young son a "wild thing" in Yiddish whenever he made trouble in their perpetually crowded Brooklyn apartment. Three decades later, the all-grown Maurice Sendak would channel his boyhood self into the wolf-suit-clad character of Max and set him loose in a strange world full of round-eyed, big-footed monsters based loosely on Sendak's own Eastern European aunts and uncles. He called them The Wild Things; they made Max their king; and they started a rumpus — all before supper.

"It always amazes me how your favorite books from childhood give you so much in your mind, when there's really not much there in substance," says Patrick Rodgers, a curator and Sendak expert at Center City's Rosenbach Museum & Library who heard the "vilde chaya" story and many others from the artist himself.

Where the Wild Things Are is just 10 sentences long and almost 50 years old, but since the trailer for a Spike Jonze movie adaptation first leaked in March, the buzz has been tremendous.

Now, the snowballing excitement has led to an incredible whirlwind of Where the Wild Things Are activity surrounding the film's Oct. 16 première. Dave Eggers, who collaborated with Jonze on the movie's screenplay, just released his novelization, The Wild Things (McSweeney's, Oct. 13), and Gregory Maguire, a personal friend of Sendak's best known as the author of Wicked, explores connections throughout the illustrator's body of work in Making Mischief: A Sendak Appreciation (William Morrow, Sept. 15).

Further still, New York's Animazing Gallery is in the midst of the largest-ever sale of Sendak's work ($21,000 Wild Thing etching, anyone?), and Philly's own Rosenbach — which holds the authoritative, 10,000-piece Sendak collection — is currently exhibiting a selection of Where the Wild Things Are ephemera.

With...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/10/08/red-stuart-sword-swallower http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/10/08/red-stuart-sword-swallower

"My teacher Toni Del Rio first took out a bayonet from World War I and shoved it down her gullet," says John "Red" Stuart, recalling his first stab at sword-swallowing. "Afterward, she pulled it out, took one look at me and said, 'Monkey see, monkey do!'"

Stuart, then 16, took Del Rio's bayonet, wiped off her saliva, lubricated the blade with his tongue, and tried to force it down his throat. He gagged and coughed the first time. He miscued the second. Eventually, he was given a chrome blade with no handle — a sword smaller than the bayonet — and finally, he got his first blade past his second gag reflex.

"After I pulled it out I hesitated to cough and clear my throat," says Stuart, speaking on the phone en route to Little Rock. "Toni took one look at me and said that if I believed I could do it, then I could. But if I hesitated or showed fear, then I'd never get any further. I took that in, gave it another try five minutes later, and shoved it all the way down my throat."

There was no turning back. Over the next 42 years, Stuart would become a master of this peculiar art form. He's made his way into the Guinness Book of Records for swallowing 25 swords at once, although he's done more than twice that staggering figure this year. He's one of the few sword-swallowers ever recognized for swallowing a car axel, which he first did in 1977 — something no one else has so much as attempted since 1954.

Not content to master just one type of death-defiance, Stuart went on to tackle the other seven so-called deadly tortures, too: f...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/10/01/design-philadelphia-2009 http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/10/01/design-philadelphia-2009

"I remember writing in my journal that I loved the idea of 'a city dialoguing with itself,'" says photographer Marianne Bernstein, who this year curates one of Design Philadelphia's seminal events, the Welcome House in Love Park. There, for each of 10 days (Oct. 4-13), a different artist will perform a daylong interactive piece inside a 10-foot glass cube.

"All of [the performances] will be interactive," explains Bernstein. "Anyone who stops by will become part of the art." Then, at night, a video of the previous day's performance will be projected on the cube. "I see the Welcome House as a catalyst for change, a portal for creativity," she says.

Bernstein has a history of orchestrating projects that engage people with each other and with the city. "The entire process becomes art," she says. "Many documentary filmmakers and theater directors also work this way. They have an idea, they work with others, and everything unfolds organically."

Collaboration, indeed, has made the Welcome House possible. Bernstein teamed up with Eugenie Perret, co-owner of Old City furniture gallery Minima and co-curator of last year's "A Clean Break," an exhibit of "smart" houses on Broad Street. Perret, who Bernstein calls Philadelphia's "doyenne of style," will turn the park into Design Philadelphia's public lounge (she'll also perform in the Welcome House on Oct. 7, knitting herself into a cocoon). Daryn Edwards of Interface Studio Architects transformed Bernstein's concept of a shelter for artists into the glass cube; Kurt Schlenbaker and Will Stanforth are heading up the build and installation; Ricardo Rivera of Klip Collective is producing the video. The project, presented by First Person Arts and InLiquid *^{(this line has been modified from its original published version)}, will culminate in November, when the First Person...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/24/casino-free-philadelphia http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/24/casino-free-philadelphia

It's gotten harder and harder to keep up with news about Foxwoods and SugarHouse, the two casinos authorized by Harrisburg to open up shop here in Philly whether we like it or not. First, they were both going to be on the waterfront. Then, Foxwoods wanted to move to Chinatown, then a few blocks east. Then Donald Trump sued the gaming board. Once, Mayor Nutter was opposed to the casinos; then he supported Foxwoods but not SugarHouse; then he OK'd both; now he's mad at Foxwoods again. Woof.

Casino-Free Philadelphia, on the other hand, has maintained a position that is very simple, and very clear: no casinos in Philadelphia. Period.

And while various parties have called the casinos various bad things — badly planned, poorly located, questionably financed — it was Casino-Free that had the gumption to call them "predatory." As a result, their coalition has grown to incorporate religious leaders, church groups and community leaders whose stance against casinos isn't NIMBYism but a heartfelt belief that casinos will hurt our whole city.

In the last year, the group has tried to move the debate away from parking and planning issues and neighborhood-specific opposition — and focus instead on the nature of urban casinos and the hypnotic slot machines that sustain them.

By emphasizing evidence that huge portions of casino profits come from people with serious gambling problems (studies yet to be acknowledged, much less contradicted, by our elected officials), Casino-Free helped make the struggle against ca...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/24/941-theater http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/24/941-theater

When you hear about Philly's movie scene, you rarely hear much beyond the Hollywood productions that deign to use our city as a poor man's stand-in for pricier locales. But the boys behind 941 Theater — Nick Esposito, Doug Sakmann and Zafer Ulkücü — are doing more for local film, simply by giving movie-makers a screen for their work.

Esposito, Sakmann, Ulkücü, filmmakers themselves, got into the screening business through their now-eight-year-old Backseat Film Fest, which led them to their current NoLibs home (941 N. Front St, 941theater.com). The theater operates under the nonprofit Philadelphia Friends of the Projected Arts, which stresses seeing films on the big screen — rather than a computer or iPod — and the communal aspect of going to the movies.

It's what 941 is capable of that makes them exciting. There's no agenda. In addition to having the cheapest rental rates in the city, 941's setup is tantalizing: A night can start in the venue's considerably roomy lobby and move to the 100-seat screening room, which can also be converted into a 200-capacity concert venue.

Looking ahead, 941 wants to strengthen ties with indie distributors and host more revival nights. "It's getting easier to show your films as a young filmmaker, but it's getting harder to make money off it. A perfect situation would be some filmmakers, they raise some money, they make a good film, they do theatrical screenings, they make their money back and make more movies," says Esposito. "Every project people do is theoretically better than the last one."

This wasn't a normal year.

Not this year. Not anymore.

Besides, with the preponderance of awards — everyone's got a best-of issue, or an award site, or a vote-for-your-favorite-this-or-that troll poll — aren't we all suffering from trophy fatigue?

So this time around, we got really choosy. No idiosyncratic award names. No props without results and a plan. We're calling CP Choice our Big Vision Issue, focusing on people, groups and institutions who've had a killer year, and whose trajectories portend bright futures for themselves — and for the city.

In excruciatingly long meetings, we mapped out categories and the people/places/things that should be nominated in each. We then put it all to an editorial board vote. The write-ups that follow represent the results of this process.

Behold, the chosen ones. Behold, the new normal.

Music | Food and Drink | Visual Arts | Government and Politics | http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/17/megan-bridge http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/17/megan-bridge Each salon operator interviewed for this story spent time and lent devotion to my slew of questions — much like they do at their salons. Below are some of their thoughtful answers not included in our feature.

But upon closer inspection, the illusion of fragility falls away. The elegant filigree is wrought in chain-link rather than linen; it is, in fact, a fence, not a lacy approximation, though its utility may be overshadowed by its beauty. Imagine keeping the neighbor kids at bay with something that resembles grandma's finest tablecloth.

"We have this notion of lace being an ephemeral, magic thing," says Carla Bednar, the Design Center's assistant director. "This exhibition takes a leap forward into another dimension, applying new ideas to a traditional notion."

For "Lace in Translation," The Design Center invited three internationally renowned artists and designers to rethink the idea of lace, resulting in radical and whimsical takes on a form which typically refuses to descend from its lofty, elegant perch. The exhibition is a major undertaking for the Design Center, its first show to commission new work and to make use of the exterior grounds. It's also the first effort in a much larger project envisioned by Bednar and collections curator Nancy Packer called the Fabric of Philadelphia, a partnership with area museums, libraries, businesses and community members to celebrate the city's textile heritage.

"We know that the industry is in tremendous decline in the city, so we wanted to capture and honor that history while we could," Bednar says. "It's already bec...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/03/best-of-the-fest http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/03/best-of-the-fest

Neal Santos Brian Saunders/JUNK - Urban Scuba

7(X1) Samurai

There's no funnier way to pay homage to a cinematic masterpiece rife with epic battle scenes and hundreds of actors than to turn it into a one-man show. David Gaines uses masks, miming, acrobatics and Fight Club-style self-beatdowns in his absurdist take on Akira Kurosawa's classic, Seven Samurai.

—Brion Shreffler

Sept. 9 and 14, 8 p.m.; Sept. 13 and 19, 5 p.m.; $15, The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St.

It's on! One or another of Philly Improv Theater's groups perform pretty much every Fringe night. What to do? You can't see 'em all. (Can you?) If you have to choose one, pick Activity Book. It's one of PHIT's resident performing groups — not to be confused with independent cohorts like Traffic Jelly or Industrial — with a rep for foolishness and hijinks.

—Janet Anderson

Sept. 7, 11 and 13, 7 p.m.; Sept. 17, 8:30 p.m.; $10, Mainstage at the Adrienne, 2030 Sansom St.

Driven to bankruptcy by a serial killer affectionately named "The Knife," the titular brothers, played by seasoned actors Michael Toner and H. Michael Walls, try to unravel the mystery surrounding the pub while taking a stab at bigger-picture mysteries (religion, politics, the whole nine) all the while.

—Lauren Fleming

Sept. 5, 2 and 6 p.m.; Sept. 6 and 13, 4 p.m.; Sept. 9 and 16, 7 p.m.; Sept. 12 and 19, 2 and 6 p.m.; $20, Fergie's Pub, 1214 Sansom St.

The Chairs...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/03/live-arts-fringe-social-media http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/03/live-arts-fringe-social-media

Matt Saunders

Emily Letts as Anita Prowler in FATEBOOK: Avoiding Catastrophe One Party at a Time

In a Northern Liberties warehouse space, actor Alex Bechtel stands in front of a large screen, on which his video image sits in a living room strumming an acoustic guitar.

Across the room, standing in front of another screen (this one, for the time being, blank), Delanté Keys glances over and laughs. "It's strange watching you watch yourself."

Strange, perhaps, but something we're increasingly getting used to. What are social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace and Twitter, after all, but a way to watch people watch themselves watching us watch them watch everybody else?

That unprecedented balance of intimacy and anonymity has captivated local artists to such an extent that no fewer than four of the shows in this year's Live Arts/Fringe are wrestling with it in some way.

New Paradise Laboratories' FATEBOOK takes Facebook as its inspiration — but also as its venue. In their NoLibs space, the company has been constructing a hall of Web 2.0 mirrors, a series of screens which will reflect back not only the images of the show's characters, but their feelings, thoughts, status updates. But by the time Fest audiences step inside, the show will already have been going on for months.

"It's been a very unusual creative process," says director Whit MacLaughlin. "How do you write a two-month-long play that people can come into anytime during the process, and they might stay three minutes, or they might stay three weeks?"

FATEBOOK has been a collaborative process, bouncing back and forth between real space and cybers...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/03/live-arts-fringe-pig-iron-welcome-to-yuba-city http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/09/03/live-arts-fringe-pig-iron-welcome-to-yuba-city

Pig Iron Theater Co

The prairie here isn't quite dusty enough to roam — the cacti just beginning to green, the busted-down pickup truck not so very busted. Yet it's so dang hot while visiting the set of Welcome to Yuba City — Pig Iron Theatre Co.'s latest Live Arts offering — that it feels an awful lot like the border town created by playwright Deborah Stein, the cast of Pig Ironers, designers, choreographers and director Quinn Bauriedel.

In this mythic America, everything is one-of-a-kind, broken and wild, made from unusual connections and half-digested philosophy. It's a center-west that, here in Obamaland, seems left behind.

"Being different — otherness — is a theme in the piece," says Bauriedel on a break from talking up the 7-foot restraining order that keeps feuding-lover Yuba characters (played by company co-founder Dito van Reigersberg and newcomer Charlotte Ford) at bay. Other Pigs in the distance include company members Sarah Sanford, Geoff Sobelle, James Sugg, Hinako Arao and Alex Torra.

Check out a Q&A with Pig Iron's newest member, Charlotte Ford.

The characters have names and identities, but Yuba's toying with archetypes — the cowboy-philosopher, the vagrant, the alien-seeker, the fussing fighting couple — all seemingly in a tug-of-war with no battle ever won or lost. "Dito and Charlotte are locked in an endless fight, needing to keep away from one another to honor the restraining order, but also realizing they don't want to be much more than 7 feet away, either."

Yuba's characters are largely outsiders, on the margins physically, psychically. "If you look hard enough, you see there's a sly commentary about immigration in the piece, too. But it's ...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/07/30/little-kid-life-sentence http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/07/30/little-kid-life-sentence

By: Evan M. Lopez

Stacey Torrance was 14 years old and knew exactly what he was doing when he and his 23-year-old cousin plotted to rob Alexander Porter in North Central Philadelphia. But Torrance says he had no idea their crime would lead to kidnapping. And he certainly had no idea it would lead to murder.

After the robbery, his cousin and two co-conspirators — ages 19 and 28 at the time — took Torrance home and dropped him off. The co-conspirators then drove Porter to a secure garage in Germantown and brutally tortured him for nearly 24 hours without Torrance's knowledge. They beat Porter mercilessly and nearly smothered him to death by wrapping him in a thick blanket, pinning him into and locking the trunk of his own car. Because Porter was almost dead (the medical examiner's 1988 report listed a contributing cause of death as "strangulation"), their options had run out. They drove Porter to an isolated road in Chestnut Hill, shot him dead and left him to rot. Torrance had no idea.

Twenty-one years later, Torrance is an inmate at the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institution at Chester (SCI Chester). Though he didn't pull the trigger — and maintains he had no inkling that Porter's life was in danger — he's serving a murderer's sentence: life in prison without the possibility of parole. He is one of the youngest criminals ever to receive such a harsh sentence in the state of Pennsylvania.

Opposition to juvenile life without parole has finally, after years of forceful campaigning from advocates and prisoners alike, become a resonant political and legislative issue. In June, the House of Representatives heard the latest testimony in a series of hearings about the Juvenile Justice Accountability and Improvement Act, which seeks to "enact laws and adopt policies to grant child offenders who are serving a life sentence a meaningful opportunity for p...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/07/23/amanda-blank http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/07/23/amanda-blank

Michael T. Regan

Location: Scoop de Ville, 1734 Chestnut Street

Amanda Blank is locked out. Under ordinary circumstances, this wouldn't be a problem for the nice, naughty rapper and performance artist. The Germantown native currently lives blocks from me in the Italian Market area. Surely, she can hang up on me and make calls to the name-brand locals she's worked with and hung around forever — Diplo, Thom Lessner, Naeem Juwan — and get a lock jimmied.

Not today, though.

"I can't believe I'm stuck in Berlin and that I just lost my room key," says Blank with a huff.

Achtung, baby.

She builds a head of steam for a second, then stops and begins to laugh, more than likely at herself, and steps into an elevator to get the situation worked out.

She'll work it out. That's what she does. She works it.

Stream "Might Like You Better":

Only this time, Blank — long the side dish, the mouthy, sexed-up hype girl, the rowdy collaborator — has to work it on her own.

Her boys are behind her, always. There's no doubt that the guys she calls "brothers" on the scene — like Juwan and Alex "Armani XXXchange" Epton, respectively the MC and producer of Philly hip-hoppers Spank Rock who first introduced Blank to the world — have her back. And DJ/producer Diplo is there for her. And her best gal pal, Santi "Santigold" White, is, too.But this is Amanda Blank's time. She's on her own. And ...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/07/16/major-league-soccer-stadium-chester-pennsylvania http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/07/16/major-league-soccer-stadium-chester-pennsylvania

Illustration by Don Haring, Jr.

Let's say you want to build a stadium. Actually, let's say you want to make money, and you've decided that the way to do that is to own a soccer team. In order for that soccer team to make money, you need to build a stadium for it to play in.

And let's say you like making money more than spending it.

This was the conundrum that faced Keystone Sports and Entertainment LLC, a group of investors including iStar Financial CEO Jay Sugarman, developers Christopher and Robert Buccini and David Pollin of the Buccini/Pollin Group, and former Philadelphia School Reform Commission Chairman James Nevels — we'll call them The Team — who, in early 2007, began looking to build a soccer stadium, and to coax a Major League Soccer team to move in.

Of course, stadiums require land. But land is expensive, and it usually comes with other hassles, too: taxes, neighbors, community groups, politicos seeking a cut of the action. If only there were some piece of ground as cheap as the dirt it sits on, situated in a city that wouldn't tax the owners, where politicians would gladly make a sweetheart deal and neighbors weren't likely to raise much of a fuss — or, if they did, weren't likely to be listened to.

Welcome to Chester.

A once-booming industrial center just outside Philly, the city of Chester has fallen on hard times. The unemployment rate is high, the education rate low. The city's downtown is largely shuttered, and the only businesses that seem to thrive are corner shops and dollar stores. Undoubtedly the most publicized sign of the 37,000-person city's struggles is the oft-mentioned but not-yet-remedied fact that the city does not have a single supermarket.

Chester also possesses a largely abandoned waterfront on the Delaware, left barren after the industry that built the city pulled up and left for good. ...]]> http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/07/02/soldiering-on http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2009/07/02/soldiering-on

Neal Santos

This Fourth of July weekend, 22-year-old Raheem Rowell will be cooking out with family he hasn't seen since his deployment — he spent last year shuttling detainees all over Iraq in Blackhawk helicopters. Tim Stanton, who just turned 20, will enjoy the Fourth at the Jersey shore before he ships out to Baghdad to train Iraqi police. And Northeast Philly's Dave Marris, 50, will be thinking about his wife and kids this weekend while drinking tea with locals in western Afghanistan.

More than 1.5 million Americans have fought in this country's two ongoing wars. While public interest and news coverage in Iraq and Afghanistan have waxed and waned, these volunteers have continued to stream to and from the battlefield. They'll continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

Much (although not enough) attention has been given to the fallen soldiers of Operations Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Military suicide, and those suffering traumatic injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder, are also, rightfully, topics of interest. But there are others who've served, and sacrificed. They're struggling to re-establish their lives under the threat of being called back; they're working to re-engage with a civilian world that we, their neighbors, take for granted.

Here are 13 such people from the region. Our thanks to these vets for their time, the photographs you see here and, of course, their service.

...]]>