Counting Down To Glock Day

Can you feel it? That’s the onset of Glock Day Fever, now only two days away!

The event at the Philadelphia Archery & Gun Club (note: that link takes you back to 1997) has free food and drinks, free promo items, a $79 membership special and discounts on glocks.

As Metro noted yesterday in a cover story (!) about Glock Day, if you come in and buy a gun at the South Philly gun club, you get a free safety lesson. CeaseFirePA isn’t even really all that pissed off at the event. (That’s pretty solid marketing, though: Just hearing the words “Glock Day” makes me want to pop a few rounds. Safely, of course, at a shooting range.)

It wasn’t just the Green Swede that wrote about Glock Day. Daily Candy Philadelphia, which its press kit says features “an affluent, influential female audience,” also inexplicably wrote about Glock Day, calling the Glock “Philly’s gun of choice.”

Actually, that should be a deterrent to criminals. The only thing more powerful than an affluent, influential female is an affluent, influential female with a gun.

Join the club, win a Glock [Metro]
What to do this weekend [Daily Candy Philadelphia via Doree]
Archives: Glock Day

Another Day That Will Live In Infamy

From Tsunami Tuesday to making fun of Ron Paul’s impending death, people just love to get offended on the Internet.

And now, Metro’s daily caption contest has offended people due to a tragedy I’ve never heard of from 50 years ago:

In England, the opposing teams sometimes boo just to cause drama and blah blah blah. I would love to hear some American fans boo a moment of silence; the sports media would cover it like the Black Plague. Oh, sorry, did I offend anyone there?

Thanks to Chrissy for the tip; PWD’s regular commenter has a letter in today’s Metro making fun of some other letter writer. Whoa, meta. (Are you a commenter who’s done something special? Let me know!)

She also requested the following: “If you’re going to write about it you need to end it about how Man City are a superior team anyway.” I take it these Man City chaps are playing Manchester United this weekend? Oh, it shall be such an offensive day of world football you’ll think the Baker Bowl stands just collapsed.

Breaking: Major ‘Metro’ Movement

Three hundred-word stories don’t write themselves, and earlier this week PW looked at Metro and how it’s changed in the eight years in town: “Over the last two years the Metro quietly reinvented itself as a daily niche publication attempting to reach young Philadelphians through stories about indie bands, the future of the city, pseudo-mayoral candidates with mohawks and the anticasino movement.”

Well, yeah. Word trickling out of 30 S. 15th Street is Metro laid off at least two editorial staffers and several business-side staffers today, sadly. The company lost $9 million in its U.S. operations last year.

That other rumor going around, about the Inquirer building being sold to Drexel and the newspapers moving to the South Philly waterfront or the Comcast Center is, I think, BS.

Someone To Finally Pay For ‘Metro’?

Metro, the free Monday-Friday daily in Philadelphia and two other cities, is up for sale. Parent company Metro International — from the evil country of Sweden — has put its three U.S. papers (Boston and NYC are the others) on the block, reports Boston’s Globe, as the U.S. editions “have been a drag on the company’s earnings in recent years, losing more than $10.6 million in the past 12 months.”

As you may remember, selling a newspaper is not the easiest thing in the world to do, and so who knows what will happen. Publishers at the Boston and NYC editions didn’t know their papers were for sale, and maybe the idea of putting out a newspaper for young professionals actually produced by young professionals is a little too smart of an idea for the newspaper industry.

In the meantime, I’ll continue to make fun of those people in the “Today’s debate” section. Hey, I haven’t done that in a while!

‘Metro’ Bravely Defends Record Companies

Now that Radiohead has released its new album itself for download, record companies are starting to get a little nervous. (Radiohead is sort of a special case, of course, with talent and passionate fans, etc.)

And Metro, in yesterday’s paper, made sure we knew these companies need all the help we can give them.

Ahh, yes, what can be done to prevent those benevolent record companies from going under? They’ve always been so nice to us, promoting quality artists over commercial talent and not price-gouging or suing 12-year-olds or putting spyware on everyone’s computers. Er.

More »

What If They Held A Taxi Strike And Nobody Noticed?

Apparently, the two-day taxi stike ended in one-day, a stunning efficiency you normally don’t get out of your strikers. Usually two-day strikes last two days, at least. But by proving they can accomplish a two-day strike in just one day, the taxi drivers in Philadelphia have certainly proven the can be more efficient than anyone else.

Of course, the strike may have been cut short because nobody really noticed the cabs were striking. Cabs picked people up in Center City, limos covered the rest and nobody anywhere else takes cabs since they have a car or live along the EL or something. Erhm, I guess. Anyway, no more taxi strike!

According to every taxi driver in the city, the credit card machine is currently down.

Anyone listening? [Metro]

Mark Cohen Would Like You To Know His Penis Is Not Afraid Of Itself

Here is what’s funny: When state lawmakers say things like, “All over the country, people live longer lives because of me.” Here is what’s funnier: When state lawmakers propose a Phillyblog Day. Here’s what’s even funnier: When state lawmakers make a post about reaching a certain number of posts on Phillyblog.

Even funnier than that is when state lawmakers go through and make a list of the posters on an Internet messageboard with 1,000 posts or more. And even funnier than that is when there’s a sort by posts, descending order feature on said messageboard but the lawmaker doesn’t know about it so he goes through and calculates all the top posts by hand.

And, of course, even funnier than that is when state lawmakers tell reporters they’re being libeled because of comments on a blog that are posted by “MBC Penis” and say “I feel threatened by philly blog and Rep. Mark B. Cohen’s penis.”

More »

‘Metro’ A Little Insecure Of Own Standing

I know it’s hard to read the columns in Metro; there’s always the chance you’ll end up having to read Clark DeLeon’s experiences in the girls’ restroom. But now you have a little bit less to read.

Last week, Elliott Kalan, Metro’s humor columnist and Daily Show segment producer, wrote a jokey column that included this line: “As this very copy of Metro shows, the only way to get most people to read a newspaper is to literally force it into their hands.”

Unfortunately for Kalan, the interim CEO of Metro was in New York and read the column, and ordered him fired immediately. Apparently the truth hit a little too close to home. Oh well. Guess we’ll be seeing more of Mickey Z. now.

Free Paper Without Free Expression [NYMag]
Archives: Clark DeLeon

SEPTA Facing Attacks From All Sides

Pennsylvania must pass a budget by the end of the fiscal year, so as to figure out what to waste money on for the rest of this year and next. The fiscal year ends at the end of the month, which (in case you don’t own a calendar) is fast approaching.

This brings us to (what else?) SEPTA. Metro talked with a bunch of “reformers” today, asking them about new SEPTA funding. The transit agency needs a billion dollars (approx.) or else it’s going to kill all its weekday and weekend service and raise the price of tokens to five dollars. Each way.

This would make SEPTA cost-prohibitive for everyone except Tom Knox and our state lawmakers, so everyone in Philadelphia is hoping the state chips in new funding. The dude from Phillyville says that if there isn’t dedicated funding it will allow “other cities to purchase Philadelphia’s public transit infrastructure and remove it from our city. For instance, if you want to catch a ride on a Philadelphia trolley, you’re better off traveling to San Francisco.” So, also, without dedicated funding, Boston will probably just steal Route 12, which will promptly be slamming into buildings because the route follows different street paths than they have in Boston.

Meanwhile, SEPTA has another issue, as a local transgender person has filed a complaint. There’s a sticker on a TransPass (ba dum pum) that marks your gender, and this trans person was apparently hassled for being a drag queen or whatever. The real issue here is: Wow! SEPTA bus drivers care enough to hassle somebody for using someone else’s TransPass? Fortunately, if the state doesn’t give SEPTA new funding, there won’t be any more public transit in the Gayborhood anymore except PATCO, so this should blow over.

The biggest winners in the SEPTA crisis, though, are the lovable scamps asking for a buck for the R5 to get to Ardmore. If fare prices go up, they can ask for a fiver instead of a buck.

Metro recently witnessed a man fitting the description of “Mr. Stranded” collecting cash in Suburban Station from four or five people over about a half hour.

“I don’t want to talk,” he told a reporter whom he had just asked for money “to get back to Ardmore.”

There’s also a field guide to the random Center City people who ask for a buck for the subway because their car got booted or they’re an architect who designed the Kimmel Center, when they’re actually going to spend it on booze or drugs or really bad prostitutes. In case you thought these people were actually telling the truth, pro wrestling is scripted.

Reformers’ Roundtable SEPTA funding fight [Metro]
SEPTA: Not Sure If You’re A Boy Or A Girl [Philebrity]
Police step up forces as needed to head off summertime cheats [Metro]

Down And Drunk In Rehoboth Beach

One of the advantages of Metro being run by actual young people, as opposed to old people trying to be young, is that you get photos like this one accompanying Metro entertainment editor (and Delaware native) Dorothy Robinson’s story on the Delaware shore today.