About 30 Bustleton residents went down to the Zoning Board of Adjustment on Wednesday, August 12, to make it clear that they do not want Cowgirls, Inc., to open a prototype family restaurant/night club in Whitman Square across from a solid residential community.  Most of the protesters rode down on a school bus but many who work downtown took the afternoon off to support the Committee for a Better Bustleton’s fight to prevent a business born from Seattle’s Cowgirls flagship (see www.cowgirlsinc.com or www.bustleton.org). continue reading »

By Shannon McDonald

Check us out!

After a long weekend of construction and renovations, the new NEastPhilly.com is up and running. We overhauled everything to make the site easier to navigate, more fun to search and well, nicer to look at. continue reading »

By Shannon McDonald

The August issue of Philadelphia magazine is out, complete with the 2009 Best of Philly Awards. And believe it or not, a few Northeast spots made the list. Though we often rag on Philly mag (and others) for ignoring the NEast, there’s no denying the editors over there paid us some well-deserved attention in this issue. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact that Michael Callahan, who hails from the Northeast, edited the list. Either way, we’re honored. continue reading »

By Shannon McDonald

This week’s edition of CityPaper featured a cover story about cheesesteaks – The Ten Best Cheesesteaks You’ve Never Had, in fact.

Among the top 10, which are included in author Carolyn Wyman’s Great Philly Cheesesteak Book, are Frusco’s, Mr. V’s and Steve’s Prince of Steaks, coming in at numbers four and five, respectively. continue reading »

I can’t help it – I like Garfield.

Faithful viewers of the A&E cable television series Parking Wars know of whom I speak. Garfield is one of the many interesting and loveable – yes, I said lovable – characters whose day-to-day lives working for the Philadelphia Parking Authority are put on display for the viewing public. Garfield and his partner Sherry travel the streets of Philadelphia, booting vehicles owned by motorists who owe a lot of money for parking and other violations. Needless to say, they encounter their fair share of angry citizens along the way.

It is the televised altercations that are captured on video while booting, towing and waiting in line at the impound lot that has brought the Parking Authority and Parking Wars under fire in recent weeks. The show was blamed Sunday in a Philadelphia Inquirer editorial for potentially hurting the city’s tourism industry. One angry reader called the Parking Authority a “disgrace,” and demanded that it be overhauled.

I understand being mad at the Parking Authority. I’ve been there. continue reading »

By Shannon McDonald

You obviously love Northeast Philadelphia already, or you wouldn’t be on this site. But what do you love best about living in The NEast?

A recent post on PhillyBlog posed the same question to its NE users, and the answers were varied, but unsurprising.

Responses ranged from specific things like Pennypack Park to more general things like our many restaurants and central locations. Here are a few great replies: continue reading »

Outside media don’t care about the Northeast. We have all seen them misuse, misspell and mistake our neighborhoods and our streets, so we at NEast mag wanted to do something about it. When they get it wrong, we set it right in a segment we like to call Right NEast/Wrong NEast.

Courtesy of FOX29

By Shannon McDonald

The terrible thing about this story is, you can even tell from the picture FOX provides that they got mixed up. The photo is clear: the man police are looking robbed a bank in Mayfair – right in front of Mayfair mall, to be exact – not in Frankford, as FOX29 reported last week.

Someone should put out a memo to city’s media outlets and let them know that Frankford Avenue doesn’t necessarily mean Frankford the neighborhood.

Northeast Philly, meet your signature hairstyle

By Shannon McDonald

If they’re covering us, they’re either getting it wrong or making fun of us.

Not that I’d call Philebrity “big media,” but they gave the Northeast a little attention today, and not the good kind. In a post about Kate Gosselin’s hair, the Northeast takes a beating:

We’ve seen that hair before. We know that hair. We’ve seen it in the Wawa, buying smokes; we’ve seen it at Target, verbally abusing its children; and we’ve seen it at events, whispering mutedly racist tropes. In fact, anywhere where the Curiously De-Feminized Women Of The Northeast doth roam, so too does That Hair.

You read correctly folks, we’re being called low-class, child abusing racists. And if you’ve heard the recent drama surrounding Jon & Kate Plus 8, you’re all bad parents, too.

What do you think? Is this good-natured fun, or is Philebrity giving the Northeast a bad rep?

My daughter’s dentist has three vehicles parked in his examining room. True, there is a wall of clear Plexiglas that separates the brightly colored ambulances from the rows of examining chairs, which all seem to be inhabited with young, cheerful technicians. I understand that the proprietor of this pediatric dental factory in Bustleton regularly takes one of the ambulances to local schools, promoting dental care.

Oh, and did I mention that they have neon? Bright neon signs adorn the entire room, sometimes advertising food products that, if eaten too much, could have an adverse effect on your teeth.

Before going any further, I want to reassure the dental community that this is not an anti-dentist story. Far from it – if my childhood dentist had anything like this place, I probably wouldn’t have avoided making an appointment for, oh, 15 years. Back then, the children went to the same dentist as their parents. Ours was an elderly gentleman with an office down the street from Our Lady of Calvary Church. He was a competent dentist – he fixed all four of my cavities – but he did not believe in any anesthesia or Novocain. continue reading »

By Christopher Wink

Local governments across the country have anxiously awaited the influx of federal dollars as part of the Obama administration’s nearly $1 trillion stimulus plan. In the end, Pennsylvania received some $16 billion, a health portion of which went Philadelphia’s way.

The city’s cut included more than 200 individual projects that will get funding within the next 18 months. Many were citywide and included portions to the city’s housing authority, education, food stamps and between $30 million and $50 million in community development block grants, according to a report by Gov. Ed Rendell, who was actively involved in lobbying for funds.

Of all the neighborhood projects for Philadelphia, though, it seems just one is in Northeast. But, then, it’s not really in the Northeast at all.

continue reading »