Photo courtesy of SEPTA Watch.

There is a 10-year age difference between the Costa brothers. They live in two different neighborhoods of the Northeast — William in Mayfair, Joseph in Parkwood. And they were victims of two separate attacks on the Market-Frankford El last week.

William, 47, told SEPTA police (and the Daily News) he was pushed to the ground by two teenage girls last Thursday as he was about to board the train at Frankford Transportation Center just after 8 a.m.

He told authorities two additional girls video taped the incident, while a boy kicked him as he lay on the ground. The group hopped on the train and fled. continue reading »

Here’s a summary of the week’s Northeast news we didn’t cover. See others here.

Police are looking for the man who robbed a TD Bank on Grant Avenue yesterday morning. The bank, at 2520 Grant Ave., was the first among two. The second occurred just 45 minutes later at a TD branch in Abington. Police are looking for a man with a beard with gray hair. He was wearing a black jacket and a black hat with a blue symbol. He may also have red dye on his clothing from when he dropped the money when a dye pack exploded.

Keep reading to find out how much the latest El repairs are expected to cost. continue reading »

By Shannon McDonald

Police have arrested and charged a man in connection with last week’s assault on the Market-Frankford line.

David A. Kaplan, 39, has been charged with sexually assaulting a 22-year-old woman while she held her baby on the El Thursday. Kaplan sat next to the woman and held a knife to her side as he assaulted her from the Frankford Transportation Center to the Eighth Street stop.

Second District officers arrested Kaplan after responding to a call about a person with a knife on the 6900-block of Rising Sun Avenue and matched the offender to a composite sketch.

Kaplan was found guilty of three counts of theft last year, and sentenced to 12 months’ probation.

By Shannon McDonald

A mother holding her baby was sexually assaulted on the El Thursday afternoon. The 22-year-old boarded the train at Bridge and Pratt while holding her young baby. Then a man sat down next to her, pressing a knife into her side, concealing it as he sexually assaulted her all the way to Eighth and Market streets. He then got off the train, walking in the opposite direction of the woman. Other people were on the train at the time, though no one could see the knife. The suspect is a white man, 35 to 40 years old, clean shaven with slicked back blonde hair.

The Devon Theater in Mayfair has seen a renaissance. It reopens this Friday.

By Christopher Wink

The Devon hasn’t gotten this much attention in generations. Perhaps neither has Mayfair.

But now that the Frankford Avenue institution has made the long transition back to prominence, opening this weekend as the Devon Center for Performing Arts. It will mark another measure in the long transition from 1946 first-run movie theater to adult-film movieplex in the 1970s to second-run theater and to abandoned eyesore.

After a gala and private screening on Friday, with a possible appearance by Mayor Michael Nutter, the Devon opens on Saturday with a sold-out performance of Nunsense, a musical comedy.

“We’re in an Irish-Catholic neighborhood,” said Michael Pickering, the Devon’s artistic director. “Nunsense was a no-brainer.”

But don’t be fooled by the Devon’s location, far from the glitz of Center City’s Avenue of the Arts or the established arts scene of Old City. The Northeast is about to get its first professional performing arts center, by way of a decidedly working-class neighborhood.

The Devon is an all-union house, including its paid, professional actors, some from Philadelphia’s growing dramatic community. Still, its long-term strategy for success in the Northeast is heavy on community.

Read more, see video and other photos after the jump.

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