Lane, Booker Make Out On Dance Floor

BREAKING ALYCIA LANE NEWS MUST CREDIT PWD SIREN.GIF!!!

It appears noted Philadelphia power couple BookerLane are back in Philly and are… well, they are like 17 year sold, since they’re hanging out in Manayunk. I’ll let a Philadelphia Will Do I-Reporter explain via text message:

• I’m at Grape Street Pub, No Code a Pearl Jam cover band is playing, and I’m standing in front of Chris Booker and Alycia Lane, and she hasn’t hit anyone, yet
• She drinks vodka cranberry or something equally girly
• O, they won’t stop making out, fuckers

After the jump, a Philadelphia Will Do bounty.

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Breaking: Residents Of Neighborhood Complain

We all know politicians hate college kids. One, college kids don’t vote, and two, old people hate kids, and politicians are old. And so when City Council — one day after hearing testimony about public urination in Manayunk — holds a hearing about rowdy college-age kids in Manayunk, one might expect it to be another day of college-kid bashing.

Not so! You see, college-age kids also spend money in Manayunk, so nobody wants them to leave altogether. So what can you do? Find somebody else to blame: absentee landlords!

“A lot of times an absentee landlord will buy a home and make it a triplex or duplex without proper permits,” said Patty-Pat Kozlowski, an aide to Councilwoman Joan Krajewski. “A lot of people complain about trash violations, animal violations, overcrowding.”

For the past two years, Krajewski’s office has investigated nuisance renters in Philadelphia and found that absentee landlords who live out-of-area are a major problem. Their solution is to require landlords from outside of Philadelphia to have a “local agent” to be held accountable for L&I violations and quality of life issues.

And then the head of the Manayunk Development Corporation said all the kids need to be watched over by an authority figure, because that is something that all the twentysomethings in Manayunk really want.

Animal houses targeted [Metro]
Yesterday: Old Manayunk Residents Have Pissing Contest With Twentysomething Manayunk Residents

Old Manayunk Residents Have Pissing Contest With Twentysomething Manayunk Residents

As we all know, the people who live in Manayunk are dudes you went to high school with who go to bars you would be excited about going to if you were still in high school. And, apparently, after they leave those bars, they all piss all over Manayunk. Actually, that sounds pretty good. I kind of like the kids who live in Manayunk a lot more now.

While they should not be prosecuting these brave souls who dare to show Manayunk how they feel about it — protests are clearly covered under one of those amendments to the Constitution, maybe the third or something — yesterday City Council heard testimony from old people who want kids to get off their lawn and stop pissing on it.

Disgraced baseball legend Pete Rose even testified, claiming to be a Manayunk resident, and also claiming he saw public sex: “This neighborhood is in serious jeopardy right now… I would go further and draw your attention to the witnessed fact that there is also public fornication going on in our front yards.” Fuckin’ A! A free show!

Anyway, City Council will probably up the penalty for public urination to $2,000 by 2009, even though the city only has one public toilet and it probably won’t stop anybody from pissing wherever the hell they want to. And if you disagree with my assessment, you can piss off.

Manayunk Revelry Prompts City Council Action [KYW 1060]
Manayunk to public urinators: “You kids clearly have a pot to piss in.” [Metropolis]

Cops: Annual Tradition Everyone Likes Can’t Go On

This weekend is the annual Manayunk Midnight Downhill, where a ton of drunk people go down the wall — a 17 percent incline — in whatever contraption they can come up with. It’s a celebration of the bike race the following day, as well as a celebration of stupidity, but both of them sound like pretty good reasons to have a race down a giant hill.

This event, of course, is a fun time for all, and so the cops are having none of it:

“I’m hopeful people don’t come to the event this year,” said John Cerrone, commanding officer of the Fifth Police District, which controls the Manayunk area. “There’s nothing to be gained from it.”

If there’s one way to make sure people absolutely 100 percent attend an event, just get a cop to say not to go. This is the best endorsement of the midnight race yet!

The Yunker Rides At Midnight [Citizen Mom]
Manayunk Downhill ‘Suicide’ Race [Philly EDGE]

Next On Fox: Steve Keeley Damages Thousands Of Dollars Worth Of Camera Equipment

As already noted by everybody ever, whenever it snows outside, our local newspersons decide to go on a rampage, ignoring all rational thought in favor of reporting just now look snow ice sleet freezing rain Wintry Mix™ ohmigod how are we ever going to get to work tomorrow close down the entire city immediately and so forth.

This snow — or, really, any weather — rampage leads to some amusing moments on the local news. And today on Fox 5 in New York, the Good Day New York anchors threw it down to Steve Keeley on Good Day Philadelphia. (If you don’t know who Keeley is, he’s the anchor whose photo makes it look like he’s going to eat your soul.)

I’ll let NYC blog Gothamist explain what happened:

This morning’s Good Day New York on Fox 5 yielded another comedy incident during a live shot from reporter from sister station WTXF Steve Keely. Keely, reporting from somewhere in Philadelphia, turned on a snow blower which hit the cameraman and camera square in the lens. We can only assume that given the cost of camera equipment and the obvious safety issues that this was unintentional. Then again, we don’t know if this is part of his normal shtick down there.

Nope, the only schtick we have down here is dancing mascots.

Television Watching: Some Humor Among the Flakes [Gothamist]
Steve Keeley [MyFox Philly]

Kildare’s Demon Spawn To Spread, Blob-Like, Across Eastern U.S.

If there was a non-Starr Philadelphia-area restaurant that you’d expect to be come a chain, you’d probably guess that one of the cheesesteak joints would be farming out to sell our city’s most famous artery-clogging concoction to unsuspecting citizens of other cities.

That may still happen, but there’s another place that’s growing up and expatriating from our area: Kildare’s.

The brainchild of chiropractor Dave Magrogan, Kildare’s currently has five locations in the region, having opened a Headhouse Square restaurant last January. With already thriving operations in King of Prussia, Media, West Chester and Manayunk, Magrogran has decided to make his future undertakings even more ambitious.

“At the end of September, we’re opening up a new concept called Doc Magrogan’s Oyster House,” boasts the doc himself. “It’s an authentic 1920s, 1930s Northeastern oyster house—something you might find in Baltimore or Boston.”

Located in West Chester, the raw bar and eatery will be outfitted with antique lighting, signage, furniture and raised-wood paneling. A Manayunk Doc’s is in the works and a Philadelphia proper location is being planned, but that doesn’t seem to be getting in the way of Kildare’s continued expansion. Magrogran has expressed a desire to open up 45 new locations spanning the I-95 corridor over the next five years.

“We’re going to go up to Boston and we’re going to go down towards North Carolina and Virginia,” says Magrogan. “We’ll expand at the rate the economy and real estate allow us to.”

And just what do we love about Kildare’s?

If you had to single out just one factor that is priming Kildare’s to be to Irish cuisine what P.F. Chang’s is to Asian faire, a focus on details would probably be it. From the chefs trained in Ireland and imported Irish furniture to the brown soda bread that’s brought out before every meal and the U2 playing in the bar, there is no doubt a concerted effort is being made to give the illusion of the old country.

“I’m Irish and I was familiar with going to Ireland and being in the pubs,” explains Magrogan. “I thought that was something the consumer here would appreciate. I thought they would appreciate drinking their beer and eating their food in a real authentic atmosphere, not a pretend one.”

We can only expect that Doc’s will be more of the same U2, Irish Car Bombs — there’s a special on teh 17th at Kildare’s! — and other authentic fare. Frankly, we’re speechless. Godspeed, Kildare’s (and Doc’s). Godspeed, indeed.

The Irish Way [Play Philly]

Dunphy Gone From Penn; Palestra Gone Too?

A few weeks ago longtime Penn head men’s basketball coach Fran Dunphy moved like a knight to Temple to take the coaching position there.

Now, here’s a map of where events in the 2016 Olympics — more on this tomorrow, honest — would be played if Philadelphia managed to get the games, from today’s Daily News:

Great, guys. Thanks for moving Penn’s Palestra to Manayunk.

Update: This isn’t in the print edition, only online. Oddly enough.

It’s a chance to dream [Daily News]

Junk in the ‘Yunk

I don’t even really know what that means, but you know what? I couldn’t agree more.

Manayunk loses every argument [Craigslist Philly]

Quickies: And you wonder why I don’t live in Manayunk

• I saw this dude on television this morning (naturally) and he wasn’t all that hairy. But, yes, a Manayunk salon has crowned Philadelphia’s hairiest man in advance of The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s DVD release. Uh, sure. [KYW 1060]

• A fourth grader in Northeast Philly — naturally! — tried to poison her teacher with acetone, allegedly. (Acetone is the ingredient in nail polish remover, among other things.) Uhh… kids nowadays? [CBS 3]

• Drug dealers nowadays! Upper Darby cops have arrested the Sweet Dope Tooth Dealers, who had DARE stickers on their cars and delivered drugs in Tastycake boxes. Geeze, come on, cops: Think of all the Tastycakes they bought! All the local economy jobs! Sigh. [AP via 6 ABC]

• And, your media fix for the next half hour: The best corrections of the year. The winner is this one: “The Denver Daily News would like to offer a sincere apology for a typo in Wednesday’s Town Talk regarding New Jersey’s proposal to ban smoking in automobiles. It was not the author’s intention to call New Jersey ‘Jew Jersey.’” Personally, I kind of like this Jew-related correction Gawker pointed out better. [Regret the Error via Blinq]