ICYMI in August: Wonderful female chefs, the disappearing Devil's Pocket and a perfect 10
by PHILLYVOICE
The temperature certainly heated up in August. And so did we at PhillyVoice.com.
We paved the way for Pope Francis' visit, got psyched for the Eagles season, were mesmerized by a website for adulterers, learned to float and got to know the Philadelphia junior who may very well be the best high school running back in the nation.
Pope Francis' upcoming visit to our beloved corner of the world has spurred a frenzy of preparations by city officials expecting an extra 1.5 million bodies in Philadelphia over the Sept. 26-27 weekend. Numbers like that would temporarily double the city's population.
But how will we know the number of people who truly showed up in the end? Is there a way to count that many heads in a non-ticketed event? And can 1.5 million visitors, along with the Philly natives who decide to brave the flood of tourists, even fit on the Parkway?
The Eagles' first preseason game was only four days away, and Sam Bradford had yet to make anything close to an athletic move with his legs through OTAs, minicamp and the beginning of training camp. That would be 17 practices in total that were open to the media. While he had come a long way in terms of mobility since he first took the field at the end of May, he still looked like he had a ways to go.
The closest he came to an athletic play with his feet was during one of the practices at Lincoln Financial Field where a lane opened up in the middle of the field, and he ran it past the line of scrimmage for a few yards. He then stopped and dropped the ball for the next play. Otherwise, I cannot recall another time he attempted to tuck it and run, again, in 17 practices.
One of two flotation tanks, dubbed "escape pods," located at Halcyon Floats in Fishtown. The 4-foot-tall tank contains 10 inches of dense salt water that allows patrons to effortlessly float in darkness, deprived of all sensations. (THOM CARROLL/PHILLYVOICE)
I've just crawled into a 4-foot-deep metal "escape pod," where I'll spend the next 90 minutes floating atop 10 inches of buoyant salt water, deprived of basic senses, counter-intuitively, in the name of health. My eyes search for color in the darkness but come up short, my ears welcome only the serenade of my heartbeat, and my body breathes in air that's neither cold nor warm. It's nerve-wracking, anxiety-producing, exhilarating.
Devil’s Pocket, the tiny Philadelphia neighborhood near the Schuylkill River in Southwest Center City, is not so much disappearing in the face of development as fading away.
Charlie, a 75-year resident of the neighborhood – his entire life - knows why. The boneyard, that’s the reason, he says of the fate of the stubbornly insular enclave.
Philadelphia sports were pretty busy, especially for the middle of August. However you want to slice it — Chase Utley and the Eagles or the Eagles and Utley — there has been plenty to talk about during what is usually a slow time on the sports calendar. Slightly under the radar (or as much as any story can be today) was the surgery on Joel Embiid’s navicular bone that took place at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City.
There was some uncertainty surrounding Embiid’s surgery. Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie’s timeline of 7-10 days after it was initially announced fell about a month short of when the procedure actually took place. According to Hinkie, time wasn’t necessarily of the essence in this case.
Clockwise from upper left: Karen Nicolas, Marcie Turney, Jessica Nolen, Erin O'Shea, Jennifer Zavala. (THOM CARROLL/PHILLYVOICE)
Philly's female chefs might not be getting as much love as they deserve. In a country where women only occupy 6.3 percent of head chef positions in the 15 most prominent restaurant groups, we're lucky to be home to so many female culinary powerhouses. To celebrate their work - and, you know, all that yummy food - we picked the brains of some of Philly's top female chefs.
Pennsylvania joined a nationwide push last year to punish perpetrators who spread nonconsensual pornography, becoming one of several states to enact a "revenge porn" law.
The law has been on the books for less than 12 months, but state lawmakers are already considering broadening its scope to cover unaffected perpetrators. Currently, prosecution is limited to former intimate partners who disseminate sexually explicit images in an attempt to harass. Yet, critics say those restrictions leave too many "revenge porn" victims unprotected.
On most rosters, the third-string quarterback is often an afterthought, a guy collecting a paycheck for doing little more than taking practice reps and cheering on his teammates on Sunday. Because, after all, if you lose your first- and second-best passers, your season is pretty much over.
But when it comes to the Eagles, there's more than a little interest in who will be backing up the backup when the team opens the season on Sept. 14 against the Falcons — mainly because one of the players in that competition is a two-time national champion and former Heisman Trophy winner named Tim Tebow.
After many months of fine-tuning the details, chef Marcie Turney and her partner Valerie Safran opened Bud & Marilyn’s, the latest and largest addition to their Midtown Village mini-empire, on Wednesday, Aug. 26.
Marked with a retro neon sign at the rainbow crosswalks at 13th and Locust streets, the restaurant pays homage to Turney’s grandparents, Bud and Marilyn Briese, who owned a supper club called The Spot in Ripon, Wisconsin, from 1950 to 1990.
Is your name on the Ashley Madison list of marital cheaters? You may not have much to worry about -- at least in divorce court, according to Philadelphia-area lawyers.
But repercussions could play out over time, especially with the financial data that got hacked, cautioned attorneys in the region who, so far, have not noticed an uptick in calls due to the Ashley Madison data dump. But cheaters should be aware – Pennsylvania cheaters, anyway – there is just one small loophole where use of the website could factor into divorce proceedings.
Somewhere under the tangle of arms and legs was D’Andre Swift. Still moving. Still pumping his legs. Still refusing to be stopped. Four Pine-Richland defenders descended on the St. Joseph’s Prep tailback, two from each side. There were two more tacklers converging on the 5-foot-10, 200-pound dynamo from the front and behind in last year’s PIAA Class AAAA state championship at Hersheypark Stadium.
Swift was lost momentarily under a deluge of green and silver, when a white No. 7 popped out of the human tunnel and was gone — separating from everyone on his way to a 58-yard third-quarter touchdown in Prep’s 49-41 victory assuring the Hawks a second-straight state championship.
The notion that “inside every fat girl, there’s a thin girl dying to escape” isn’t new. Lots of women grew up fantasizing about what it would be like to pare their jiggly bits the way you trim a piece of meat. It’s why the idea of liposuction is so viscerally appealing to those obsessed with spot-reducing “problem areas.” As our lives increasingly shift into digital territory, however, brisk Photoshop jobs suffice for invasive plastic surgery. Hardly anyone admits using blemish smoothing, slenderizing “selfie-enhancer” apps, despite their exploding popularity. Yet, when it comes to real-life weight-loss transformations, people are more than happy to spotlight their former “imperfections.”
Philly Jesus in Love Park, Wednesday, Aug. 26, 2015. (THOM CARROLL/PHILLYVOICE)
PhillyVoice met with Michael Grant to get his take on Pope Francis’ visit to Philadelphia next month. Grant is better known for his portrayal of Philly Jesus – attired in a robe and sandals and carrying a staff as he walks around his usual haunt, Love Park. Later this month, he hopes to meet Pope Francis and have a chat.
In the Eagles' third preseason game, Aug. 29 against the Packers, Sam Bradford was 10 for 10 for 121 yards (12.1 per attempt), with three touchdowns, no interceptions and a passer rating that somehow wasn't perfect at 156.7. We relived Bradford's night, in GIF form.
When Rachel Zeldin’s great-uncle died in 2011 without an immediate family to address his funeral needs, Zeldin was stunned that she and her family had been left to both foot the bill and shop for caskets. But what struck her most about the occasion? That she was surprised at all.
"Everyone in my family was like, 'He'll be fine!' And afterwards I stepped back and looked at the situation and thought, 'Well duh, how did I not pick up on that?'" Zeldin told PhillyVoice. "It taught me a lesson to not sugarcoat death and instead ask, 'Should I be prepared? What's actually happening?'"
Born from this realization was Zeldin's do-it-yourself funeral planning service I'm Sorry to Hear, as well as a local version of a concept "cafe" that's taken Europe and parts of the U.S. by storm: the death cafe.