It's a Friday night at the Fire, a North Philly bar and music venue. The place is at capacity - people lined up outside the door shiver in the cold, awaiting a nod from the bouncer.
Students question utility of 'electronic mail'
April 25, 1994 - All over campus, students are speaking out against electronic mail, or "e-mail," a new technology that some fear may lead to the complete downfall of human civilization.
"adderall? im selling. second floor at a back table"
"a doctor or street pharmacist"
"i'm on the second floor what you wearing?"
"where the hell are you?
Waiting outside an apartment just past 40th and Spruce streets, College senior Peter Logan looked like an indie version of Mad Max, with slim jeans and a black jacket festooned with zippers.
Ladies and gentlemen, elves, faeries." The fashion show is about to start. There is glitter everywhere, the faint smell of incense wafting back from a few rows ahead.
"Designers from all over are here!
This is the first article in a two-part series in which Street will examine the effects of gentrification on West Philadelphia.
erched defiantly on the westernmost frontier of University City, the Dock Street Brewery and Restaurant is situated far beyond what many Penn students consider to be the no man's land of West Philadelphia.
They make our coffee, ring up our groceries, sell us our books, and cook our food. The less fortunate of them ask us if we can spare some change outside of Wawa.
So you're a freshman. You just survived NSO, but you're still walking in a pack, calling your parents twice a day, and desperately grasping for club meetings to attend - let's face it: you're clueless.
Or maybe you're a hardened upperclassmen who's more likely to be recognized by the overnight security guards at Rosengarten than the bouncers at Smoke's.
Everyone knows that change sucks, but does everyone know that not changing sucks?
Nearing the end of my senior year, I've recently thought a lot about Luddites - the band of men in the 1800s who were so distressed by the advent of technology that they waged war on machinery all over the English countryside in the name of their lord and savior King Ludd.
Because it was so dark in the little room,
the windows were painted shut,
the salt air eroded the wooden beams,
we tried to imagine the beginning of things.
Gideon was passed out on the couch,
the latest addition to the row
of sea shacks that began with
my father, our mother decided.
He was already thin and thirsty
when he returned home after
a 30 days sales week
to selfish children and separate bedrooms.
No longer could he entertain illusions
of the world-weary traveler, of his wife
weaving her life with his on a loom.
My grandmother
who has not had a drink in 20 years
and can remember
said it was her great-grandfather
who knew depression is the Gulf of Mexico
and gulped like a drowning fish.
A distant relative confessed she wept
at the herring flopping on the deck,
but what does it matter if she laughed or cried?
Maybe the crew sang, Oh I am young.
Maybe they sang, Oh I am young and heartless.
What of the ships that sailed
on salt and tonic water,
the exquisite quilt that fell apart
in the middle of the night,
or the threads that parted
violently with a knife?
Seagulls already jump at the sight
of pale flesh.
Neither a weight worth lifting nor a sound
worth amplifying, from the neutral perspective
it's a clusterfucked frequency, from the favorable
perspective it's an arbitrary one &
from the cinema's perspective, well,
deaf people cannot feel bass,
which, as far as science goes, is false.