Week In Will Do: The Beginning Of The End

• Have you heard the big news? Philadelphia Weekly is being sold! And it’s going to be sold to… uh, we dunno! Brian Tierney? Village Voice Media? Comcast? You? Who knows! Ha ha!

• The mayor’s race heated up this week, too, as a record number of teachers showed up to announce they didn’t want to vote for any of the five Democratic candidates. In other news, there are a boatload of new ads on the teevee.

• But! It was City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown who made the biggest news of the week, as she introduced a bill requiring Philadelphia tour guides to be licensed. And, surprise, there will be an application fee and a fine levied against unlicensed tour groups.

• In other City Council news, Jim Kenney knows how to blog and Donna Reed Miller owns a horse.

• Another beloved politician, Rick Santorum, will be making documentaries to show us (1) how much “radical Islam” hates us and (2) how we’re all immoral deviant sinners. Ooh!

• And the greatest politician of all time, Milton Street, is no longer entertaining. Sigh.

• Kal Penn, aka Kumar from Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle, is the newest professor at the University of Pennsylvania. How do you feel, adjunct professors getting $3k a class?

• Meanwhile, the Evening Bulletin’s Ed Kelley railed against government waste by complaining about a gold coin program that will surely make the government millions.

• The Theater of Living Arts will soon be renamed Fillmore Philadelphia and be part of a tremendous new chain. But, on the plus side, whee, free apples!

• And, most importantly, in Bristol, McDonald’s is opening the first of its new upscale restaurants. Yes. McDonald’s new upscale restaurant. Noodle on that one for a while.

Leftovers: John Street Saves City

• Ooh! John Street’s plan to stop violence is to get volunteers. Remind me to not go outside ever. [MyFox Philly]

• Two-hundred and seventy-one people entered the Courier-Post’s “dress up a peep” contest. Hm. [Courier-Post]

• Students named Penn one of the top 10 most desirable colleges in America. Parents, however, said they wanted nothing to do with it. Translation: Decent school, not worth the money? [KYW 1060]

• Oh, and look who got in on the cutout heads bandwagon? [Fight For Room 215]

One Man’s Obsessive Dedication To Improving The Career Of One Local Traffic Reporter

Selected offerings from the blog of one Gionni, which appears to contain all posts about Dorothy Krysiuk:

Dear Producer,

My wife and I find the transition from Sue to Dorothy, a bit generic or boring. Allow me to explain. My wife favors Dorothy Krysuik a whole lot. Myself and her staff of 30 people agree. So we all made a game out of this similarity to see if my wife can dress exactly like Dorothy everyday, down to the shoes. So every morning myself (1), my staff of 50, my children’s teachers (4), my wife (1), her parents (2), my parents (2), and my wife’s staff of 30 watch the traffic to see how the roads are but also to see what Dorothy is wearing. We began this game when the transition from Sue to Dorothy started with a full view of Dorothy and then panned in. I believe it was around March 2006. It was very exciting because when these 90 people would see her during the course of the day, the universal response would be “Oh my God. She even has the same shoes” Everyone loved it. Can you please go back to the full view and then pan in to Dorothy.

More »

Ignorant Tour Guides Fight Regulation

Yesterday, City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown introduced a bill in city council that would require the city’s tour guides to be certified yearly. Reynolds Brown, didn’t specify what the penalty would be for running an unlicensed tour, but I assume it’s torture.

Today, the Inquirer gets the reaction from the city’s best historical figure impersonators, including Ralph Archbold, aka Ben Franklin. Archbold says he cringes when he once heard a duck boat driver refer to an old-timey guy as a pirate. Oh no! The tour driver on the tour where riders get quacking whistles to blow the entire time isn’t entirely accurate!

Reynolds Brown defended the measure by saying “cities like” Williamsburg, Va., and Savannah, Ga., have these laws. Then she revealed the penalty: $300. Yep, it could be a law in Philadelphia to run a tour company without a license. Oh, and there’s an application fee, too. Of course there’s an application fee! The money to pay Reynolds Brown doesn’t grow on historical trees!

The Inquirer’s Julie Stoiber also has some key background details:

Brown became interested in the issue after receiving a letter from Ron Avery, a retired Daily News reporter who now gives tours, in which he complained about clueless guides.

“In this city anyone can be a guide - even if they just stepped off a train from Minnesota and could not find Broad Street with a map,” he wrote.

Apparently, Ron Avery isn’t familiar with the American Dream, that one day a little boy can grow up and move from Minnesota via train and become a tour guide in Philadelphia right away. And one tour company, Centipede, Inc., has a 34-part manual for guides to study, as well as a three-hour test with questions like: “In what ways has Philadelphia been important in the field of medicine?”

But it’s tour guide Camilla Beuchat who gives perhaps this most honest view:

“I’d love to be forced to learn more than I already know,” said Beuchat.

Tell me about it. I can’t even read a book unless somebody forces me to do it.

Should city tour guides be licensed? [Inquirer]
Yesterday: City Council To Improve Citizens’ Lives Again

Whole Foods Sweeps ‘Gay News’ Awards

The Philadelphia Gay News unveils its first-ever “Pink Penny” awards in this week’s issue, a feature that apparently celebrates the best of Philadelphia in approximately 5,000 categories. It took the paper this long to figure out that if you do a “Best Of” issue, there’s a chance other newspapers will write about you, therefore getting you attention.

Okay, I actually counted 148, which is even more than the number of murders so far this year in Philadelphia (99 at last count). Of course, there’s some overlap in these awards, so naturally there are a few repeats, but the number one winner is most definitely Whole Foods, which took first place in three (3) categories: Free samples (grocery store); Best supermarket to cruise for young, hottie queer women; Catering dinner for 12. The first category went to both Whole Foods at 2001 Pennsylvania Ave. and 929 South St.; the other two only went to the South Street location.

I think my favorite category is “Tourist trap to take your out-of-town family (whom you don’t like),” which naturally goes to Ride the Ducks. Though I guess I would have gone with Super Ducks for the Milton Street factor.

Pink Penny Awards [Philadelphia Gay News]
Related: Stop The Duck

The Incredible, Edible Bob Brady

Knox has been having those spaghetti dinners for a while. Maybe Bob Brady can’t match that, but he certainly could give out “Bob Brady” pretzels. Or maybe he can get “BRADY” spelled out with cheesesteaks? Quick, somebody call Geno’s!

Pictures [Bob Brady Works]

Deconstructing The Mayoral Ads

In recent weeks, there have been a couple new mayoral candidate ads popping up during the news and Jeopardy! I haven’t mentioned them much before, so I figured I’d do a thorough analysis and fact check of each commercial make fun of them after the jump.

More »

Possible Reasons Holy Family University Decided To Sponsor The Phillies Ballgirls This Season

• Holy Family is the Phillie Phanatic’s alma mater
• The expanding college is installing a satellite campus inside Harry The K’s
• Catholic charity for such a bad, bad baseball team
• Honoring the school’s longtime president with a giant hot dog and butterscotch krimpet just wasn’t enough
• Hot Phillies ballgirls to be associated with college with high female population in minds of 12-year-old boys
• New study revealed 75 percent of college applicants make decision based on zany sponsorships
• Phillies ballgirls are actual Holy Family graduates, and this was the best job they could get (rimshot)

Southwest Airlines customers returning from Florida to receive surprise welcome from Phillies on Friday [Phillies.com]
April 17, 2006: ‘Good Day’ Finally Lands The Biggest Mascot Of Them All

Online Ticket Sales Allegedly Now Safer

The Pennsylvania House has passed and sent to the Senate a law which gives buyers recourse if they buy tickets off a scalper and they’re fake.

Some reps didn’t want to vote for the bill, since it “legitimizes an underground economy” and blah blah blah. The bill is not for the fake Ticketmaster tickets guys sell outside of concerts at the Wachovia Center, but for people who get the incorrect seat from an online purchase. In order to give the buyers recourse, businesses selling tickets on the Internet must have a physical presence in Pennsylvania, ha ha hahahaha.

He doesn’t say it, but I’d bet Buxco State Rep Tommy Tomlinson passed the bill after getting totally ripped off on some Third Eye Blind/Ben Folds tickets.

Pa. Senate Votes To Regulate Tickets Resold Over The Net [KYW 1060]

How’s The Shore? Oh, It’s Great Do-KABOOM!

A mile long stretch of beach in Surf City, N.J., has been closed down by totally uncool regulators trying to stop kids from having fun this summer. Oh, and they also found unexploded munitions.

The bombs date back to World War II and were discovered by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in sand that had recently been pumped onto the Ocean County beach. The beach was immediately closed and now the beach might not be re-opened in time for Memorial Day weekend.

Authorities have posted danger signs at the beaches and blocked off the entrances. Security guards patrol the area around the clock.

“It’s like walking into a landmine,” said Sonny Mack, one of the security guards. “We make sure they stay out. If it wasn’t my job, I wouldn’t be out there.”

I think Surf City needs to use this as a marketing tool. You market it as a giant fun park where you’re blown sky high by antique munitions, charge $10 to get in, and the town’ll be rich in no time.

N.J. Beach Closed After Explosives Found [NBC 10]