Phil Pappas, left, and Mike Mawson, of West Frankford Town Watch, outside the Thriftway at Frankford Avenue and Pratt Street around 2 a.m. Sat. July 10.

Mike Mawson smells something.

It’s past midnight on Comly Street near Bustleton in Mayfair. The sun went down hours ago, but forgot to take this sticky July heat with it. Mawson is riding shotgun in the sensible four-door sedan that his partner Phil Pappas drives. The West Frankford Town Watch patrol was circling around to head back south of Cheltenham Avenue to drive the streets of its namesake neighborhood when Mawson caught a whiff of something off in the still nighttime air.

“It smells like something is burning,” confirms soft-featured Pappas, 53, sitting upright with two hands on the steering wheel and dressed with purpose in matching earthtones. “I’ll pull over.”

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The former Blue Ox Bistro at 7980 Oxford Ave. in Fox Chase, where the Grey Lodge owner is expanding. Click to enlarge.

The horizon for the opening of Hop Angel Brauhaus, the re-imagined Blue Ox Bistro in Fox Chase from Grey Lodge publican Mike “Scoats” Scotese and partner Pat McGinley, has become clearer.

The project is on schedule and due for a soft opening in September and a grand opening in October, says Scoats. The pair has been leading cosmetic work to the historic 7980 Oxford Ave. location, which has nearly 330 years of history as a pub.

“The renovation will involve more sweat than cash,” Scoats says.

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Northeast Philadelphia Now meeting at the John Perzel Community Center on Monday, June 21, 2010.

The beginnings of a coalition to unite the neighborhoods of Northeast Philadelphia around a common agenda stemming from quality of life crimes took another humble step inside a Mayfair recreation center Tuesday night.

Just a handful of attendees cycled in and out of the John Perzel Community Center for the second meeting for the Northeast Philadelphia Now initiative, corralled by Mayfair Town Watch Founder John Vearling, and the conversation roamed wildly. The pitch is to bring various and sundry community leaders together to develop cohesive strategies to supplement stretched police details and maintain the family-first reputation that has been a Northeast staple since its post-World War II boom.

“Our question is what can we do in the Northeast and what can we do now,” Vearling said. “Whatever the rest of the city does, I don’t care. I want to fix the problems in the Northeast.”

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District Attorney Seth Williams at the June Northwood Civic Association meeting.

Seth Williams says he doesn’t always wear his seat belt while driving.  Philadelphia’s District Attorney also says he was recently caught by a red-light ticket camera.

Lessons for enforcing driving in a town whose DA has broken a law or two can be implemented citywide. So Williams told 30 residents at Tuesday’s Northwood Civic Association meeting in the basement of St. James Church.

“It’s not the severity of punishment that changes behavior,” he said. “It’s the certainty of punishment.”

It was one of four hallmarks he gave for his developing administration, before taking questions from a community that has characterized itself in a quality-of-life war against blight and crime.

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A police who last month said he had been shot during a pursuit in the 19th District admitted yesterday that he made up the shooting.

Sgt. Robert Ralston, 46, of Walton Park said he was shot by a black male April 5. The subsequent investigation did not turn up a suspect who fit Ralston’s description, and many inconsistencies — including the lack of shell casings — led authorities to question the claim. continue reading »

In February 2009, neighbors noticed a change in 1522-24 Church Street in Frankford. Furniture was being moved and the noise began.

Since then, at nearly every Frankford Civic Association meeting, the property was criticized for noise and lewdness violations. Neighbors who’ve declined to go on record call the property an “illegal recovery house.” One that, the neighbors allege, allows their residents to continue to use, distribute and sell illicit narcotics.

State Sen. Tony Payton’s Chief of Staff Jorge Santana has called it an example of “the worst of the neighborhood.” At Thursday’s Frankford civic meeting, rumors surfaced that a change was at hand.

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New Frankford Development President Felicia Richardson addresses the Northwood Civic Association at its monthly meeting Tuesday, April 20, 2010.

It seems the Northwood Civic Association has made nice with the for-profit company poised take operational control over the storied Frankford Y.

“This has the prospects of being a well established part of the community,” civic President Barry Howell told nearly 40 residents inside the St. James’ church basement at Castor Avenue and Bridge Street Tuesday night.

It was Howell, of course, who said in December that he “sensed a rat” around the proposal. But Howell now says lots has changed since then.

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Franklin Towne Charter students with a check from the Rohm and Haas Foundation in 2008. The school was one of two Northeast charter schools cited by the city controller's office this month.

Two Northeast charter schools have been cited for profiteering by the City Controller’s office in a recent investigation.

Controller Alan Butkovitz’s investigation of 13 city charter schools “found repeated examples of complex real estate arrangements in which charters leased or rented facilities from related nonprofit organizations,” according to the Inquirer.

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The former Blue Ox Bistro at 7980 Oxford Avenue in Fox Chase, where the Grey Lodge owner is expanding. Click to enlarge.

Mike “Scoats” Scotese, the reserved yet beloved publican behind Frankford Avenue staple Grey Lodge between Mayfair and Wissinoming, is expanding.

Scoats and his business partner Pat McGinley yesterday purchased for an undisclosed sum the historic Blue Ox Bistro, located at 7980 Oxford Avenue in Fox Chase, which has been shuttered for months. By the end of summer, Scoats says he and McGinley hope to reopen as the Hop Angel Brauhaus.

“The opportunity sort of found us, but we had an eye on the Brauhaus for a while being the only other Northeast place with a reputation for its beer selection,” Scoats, who bought the Grey Lodge in 1994, told NEast Philly. They had been looking at the location since last November but only recently went for sale.

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Common Pleas Judge Chris Wogan addressing the Burholme Civic Association meeting on April 8, 2010.

Judge Chris Wogan says he has such a reputation for being tough on crime,  that once a defendant had a will drawn up, naming Wogan as the primary beneficiary in the hopes that a conflict of interest might force a change.

It didn’t work then, the Philadelphia Common Pleas judge says, and nothing has changed.

“They say I’m tough. I just think I’m fair,” Wogan, 60, told more than 60 residents at Thursday night’s Burholme Civic Association meeting. In a 20 minute address, Wogan railed against his perceived frustrations with the Philadelphia court system but said there is hope.

“Good people are working to fix the problems,” the 1968 Cardinal Dougherty High School alumnus said. “There is an optimism now that I didn’t see even a few years ago.”

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