“Click that ‘hood!” challenges Philly residents to identify city neighborhoods as quickly as possible.

It might be easy to pick out Somerton or Holmesburg, but could you find Elmwood? What about McGuire?

Code for America and Philly-based Azavea compiled their data and app-making skills to create “Click that ‘hood!” The entertaining game challenges users to identify neighborhoods in their cities, and Philly’s map is one of them. continue reading »

Earlier this year, we announced NEast Philly would take on an investigative project through a J-Lab Enterprise Reporting Fund grant and our partnership with Philadelphia Neighborhoods.

We’ve been publishing pieces of that project throughout the year, and yesterday’s article about community building post in Mayfair capped our series. With more than 10 articles, several videos and a handful of interactive pieces under our belt, NEast Philly marks the unofficial end of the grant assignment. continue reading »

The Philadelphia City Planning Commission is proposing a new subway station near the corner of Bustleton Avenue and Robbins Street, along Roosevelt Boulevard. The station would be a subway and elevated line station connected to the Broad Street line’s express tracks.

The proposal, published in a city-wide blueprint for 2035, describes the Northeast as one of the least connected regions by public transit.

Read the rest on Philadelphia Neighborhoods.

This is part of ongoing coverage in “District 172: The Politics of Change after State Rep. John Perzel,” a collaborative effort with Philadelphia Neighborhoods funded by J-Lab.

While former House Speaker John M. Perzel waits to fight corruption charges against him, there has yet to be rulings on some of the pretrial motions, a spokesman for the attorney general wrote in an e-mail.

Attorney general spokesman Nils Frederiksen did not say when these motions are expected to be decided on. Most of them from Perzel’s attorney, Brian McMonagle, seek to have the charges dropped.

Dauphin County Judge Richard A. Lewis ordered last month to delay jury selection until August so defense lawyers can look through evidence, including 1.8 million paper documents and thousands of computer files.

McMonagle argued during a pretrial hearing the Blue Card program was legitimate because it was used for legislative actions, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported. continue reading »

Sharon Weiseman of Tacony Town Watch make sure the radio signal is working so she can connect to the base operator.

“Ok, do a radio check,” said Paul Costello, president of the Tacony Town Watch, to Sharon Weiseman, his partner for the night. Weiseman is the secretary of the Tacony Town Watch; she responds and the pair start the patrol for the night.

Two other cars are patrolling the streets of Tacony and Holmesburg with Costello tonight. They need to be in constant contact with each other and with the base operator who is stationed at a house instead of on the streets. The base operator will record everything the members of the town watch call in and will call the police if there is suspicious activity.

Weiseman checks in with the other members on the street and the base operator to make sure all radios are working. Then the patrol begins.

continue reading »

Philadelphia Neighborhood correspondent Shaun Gallagher attended Tuesday’s Lawncrest Community Association on NEast Philly’s behalf, where residents were still on edge following the shooting death of William Glatz. continue reading »

A customer buys four dozen original glazed doughnuts at Krispy Kreme's grand opening, Tuesday, Nov. 9.

ON THE MAIN STREET of a little neighborhood sitting on the edge of Philadelphia’s border bleeding into suburbia, a once popular pastry factory is resurrecting its namesake and the hot glazed doughnut.

Standing underneath the “HOT NOW” sign on the front lawn, standing amid gorging customers and intrigued blue suits on a soft Fall morning yesterday, the store’s owners are joined by a councilman, a cop, a general manager and a CEO — each placing a hand on the oversized novelty scissors and cutting the long, red tape in front of a small, pale-brick box of sugar and spice.

It’s official. Krispy Kreme is back in business. continue reading »

Photo courtesy of Philadelphia Neighborhoods.

Hundreds of volunteers gathered at Carmella Playground this past weekend to help revitalize the park. CityYear, a nationwide nonprofit, headed the event. Volunteers worked together, repainting rusted fences, covering graffiti with colorful murals, planting trees and shrubs and picking up litter. Among the supporters was Rep. Tony Payton Jr., who offered inspiring words and a helping hand to the volunteers.

Payton, sporting a 76ers baseball cap, blue jeans and sneakers, shouted out to the volunteers from the small stage, “We’re gonna beautify Carmella for the kids and our city!” CityYear leaders soon dispersed the crowd to the jobs. The representative from the 179th District was right along side them, tossing a football with some of the younger volunteers.

CityYear Greater Philadelphia has over 200 members and has been in the city for 14 years. It deploys 17- to 24-year-olds in schools, who work as tutors and aim to improve the learning environment for students. “CityYear has specific emphasis on students who are at risk for dropping out,” said Rex Carney, CityYear’s department director of external affairs. “We also do events like this because we want to show that our leaders can bring the community together,” he explained.

You can read the rest here on Philadelphia Neighborhoods.

The video below highlights programs offered by JCC Klein in Bustleton that help the Northeast’s Russian-speaking population adjust to living in Philadelphia. continue reading »

Norman and Colleen Millan help to fill the pantry at the Klein JCC in Northeast Philadelphia. Photo by Tom Rowan Jr.

IN THE BASEMENT of a Jewish Community Center, in an office no larger than a college student’s dorm room, six adult women operate a pantry aiding the effort to feed Philadelphia’s seniors.

Meet Nina Cohen. She’s sitting in her angel-blue upholstered desk chair swiveling in the middle of the office, leaning across a round table to grab, unfold and then rotate back around to hold up the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer, with the top story addressing the city’s hunger epidemic.

“This is very real. This is not in some third-world country, this in the United States of America, this is in Philadelphia,” says Cohen, director of emergency food and home delivered meals at JCC Klein in Bustleton, referencing the newspaper’s report. “In this city, there are people who are not eating, so it’s very important to us to not only distribute food but try and educate people about poverty as well.”

The pantry operates a program called Kosher Meals on Wheels and provides supplemental foodstuffs to senior citizens’ doorsteps on a weekly, bi-weekly or monthly basis, as needed. The pantry counts on volunteers to help prepare, package and deliver the more than 1,000 rations a week to residents of the Northeast, as well as parts of Lower Bucks County and Abington Township.

“You will find no age group that is hungrier than another,” Cohen says. “But, what you will find with many of the seniors is a difficulty to ask for assistance. Remember, this is a generation that survived the Holocaust, survived the Depression and survived World War II, and they never expected to live as long as they have, and are really starting to run out of resources now at this late age, and we try to help bridge this gap.” continue reading »