Philadelphia's MUSLIM DAY, from Frontpage Magazine

One of the most beautiful structures in Philadelphia is 30th Street Station, a 1934 building with soaring Corinthian columns and a 95-foot-high coffered ceiling. Now called William H. Gray III 30th Street Station (Gray was a black U.S. Congressman from the Philadelphia area), the station’s renaming was signed into law by President Obama in 2014. Of course, nobody but Amtrak and city officials call the station by its Obama-given name. For most Philadelphians it’s simply 30th Street Station.

Around the time of the station’s name change, there was a shady feeling that the city was looking for any excuse to put a black Democrat activist stamp on one of the city’s grandest structures. In fact, when I interviewed former Mayor Frank Rizzo before his death in the 1990s, he told me he was astonished that Gray, who went to Princeton Theological School, was able to maintain a lucrative political career while balancing a personal life that included “a string of mistresses.” But that’s another story. Walk from 30th Street Station into central Philadelphia and the real city comes into focus. You will notice empty and abandoned stores, a pronounced lack of causal eateries, the empty Wanamaker building that used to house Macy’s, the go-to department store with the Eagle sculpture that defined Center City for decades. Macy’s demise (closure was March 25) has rendered Center City a virtual desert. In another commercial assault, Center City’s Brooks Brothers store left town about two months ago after thirty-some years on Walnut Street. On Arch Street, the famed AIA architecture center recently announced its closing. The excuse given for the closure was low attendance at events since the lockdown. (Philadelphia took the lockdown to Democrat Orwellian proportions, even establishing a snitch telephone hotline where neighbors could report on neighbors hosting large private gatherings). Throughout the city you’ll see boarded up stores and businesses, closed Asian buffet eateries that once hosted scores of city office workers at lunchtime. Center City is now home to drug-addicted homeless people and people who bought condos there years ago when the city was good but who are now stuck in a declining metropolis. South Street, where all the hippies used to meet, is now home to rowdy crowds, namely the black hooligan version of West Side Story. Once a year or so somebody shoots a gun into the crowds there; it’s really the DEI version of Woodstock. Sadly, everywhere you go in the city there are signs of decay and decline. Hop the Market Street El or the Broad Street subway, and you’ll see hundreds of drug-addicted homeless in various comatose states. In 2020, Forbes named Philadelphia the dirtiest city in America. In 2024, the city was ranked among the top 10 cities with the rudest residents. The poverty rate at 23.3% in 2019 ranked the city as the nation’s poorest city. In 2025, the city ranked as the 5th worst-run city in the U.S. A city in decline, however, is the perfect place for an Islamic revolution. To that effect, in 2024 Mayor Cherelle Parker, created the position of Director of Muslim Engagement. Mayor Parker, who is not Muslim, stated on X: “We stand with the Muslim community, and vow to work together to restore balance and light to our communities.”

Parker appointed Quaiser D. Abdullah as Director of the new department. Abdullah, who has been called an Islamosupremacist by the Israel Resource Review, is a Temple University faculty member. He’s also an advisor to the Muslim Student Association (MSA). Temple University’s MSA members are also part of the Students for Justice in Palestine, a Hamas-funded campus jihad group. Given these facts, it appears that Mayor Parker appointed a pro-jihad Muslim to a major City Hall post. But it gets worse. In 2024, to celebrate the election of Parker as the city’s first black woman mayor, an Interfaith Inaugural Prayer Gathering was held at the Catholic cathedral basilica of Saints Peter and Paul. Archbishop Nelson Perez hosted the large ecumenical gathering which included “sacred scripture” readings from Jewish, Muslim and Christian faith leaders. But can the Qur’an really be called “sacred scripture”? It can, but only in the world of politicians out to get votes, or in the mind of a Catholic archbishop trying to play nicey-nice with the powers-that-be in a city as woke as Portland, Oregon. I don’t know what “sacred” Qur’an quotes were read aloud at the basilica that day, but I can assure you they did not include the following: “The Jews are those who Allah is wrath with, and the Christians have strayed.” “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors: They are but friends and protectors to each other.” “And kill them (non-Muslims) wherever you find them … kill them. Such is the recompense of the disbelievers (non-Muslims).” The Qur’an is really a flowery terrorist manifesto: it sizzles with violence and verses about battles, blood and swords. The Muslim clergyman for the basilica event was Imam Anwar Muhaimin, who was born in Philadelphia but who left the city at age 11 with his family to study Islam in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia is a place where non-Muslims are forced to practice their religion in private and are subject to discrimination and arrest. Under Saudi law, any Muslim who converts to another religion commits a crime punishable by death. Mayor Parker’s fascination with Islam seems to be an outgrowth of the city’s growing black Muslim population as well as the Left’s alliance with Islam. It’s been said the Left is generally clueless when it comes to religion. That’s why Queers for Palestine and half-naked woke feminists in tattoos who march for Palestine can’t get it through their heads they’d be the first to be executed if sharia law were instituted in the United States. In the meantime, politicians like Parker tap into the world of make-believe when they insist all spiritual paths are equal because they all deliver the same messages of peace and love. The basilica, and not a mosque, was used for the 2024 prayer meeting because of its iconic status as a landmark structure and the importance the Archdiocese plays in the city. The selection of a mosque would have been more appropriate but it would have garnered much less publicity and legitimacy. No Catholic church should ever be used for an ecumenical prayer service involving readings from the Qur’an. The mayor’s obsession with Islam went even further when she instituted Muslim Day in the city shortly after her inauguration in 2024. In the 1970s, missionaries from the Nation of Islam filled City Hall courtyard handing out a newspaper called Muhammad Speaks. The newspaper was noted for its black nationalist views and its chronic condemnation of the white man and the white race. Every day black men in meticulously tailored suits, sunglasses and short military haircuts distributed these broadsides of hate. Apathetic liberal white Philadelphians looked the other way, never dreaming that within fifty years you would have news outlets like the Israel Resource Review calling Philadelphia City Hall, “Caliphate Hall.”

Of course, the constitutionality of a city-sponsored Muslim Day has never been addressed by the courts. Since the 1970s, Muslim activists have been given free reign in City Hall. Imagine the uproar from the Left if a city-sponsored Russian Orthodox Day had incense-swaying robed priests carrying icons in the same courtyard. Why does Islam get a special city-sanctioned day? Perhaps it was part of a deal Parker made to get the endorsement of the city’s Muslim community in 2023 during the mayoral campaign. At that time there mysteriously appeared a large group calling itself “Muslims for Cherelle Parker.” Philadelphia’s Muslim Day includes advocacy meetings with City Council members and other elected and appointed offices. One of the issues on the table was “sanctuary and safety for immigrant families.” Philadelphia is already a sanctuary city, but Muslim Day advocates for extra special protection for “immigrants” (they mean migrants) who happen to be Muslim. The more Muslims you have, the more Islamic a city becomes. Mayor Parker may well be the Trojan horse that helps Philadelphia become another version of Dearborn, Michigan. THOM NICKELS

New Neighbors on Mercer Street

Let’s consider the empty house on the street where I live. This house sat empty for months before a new owner purchased it. The former owner, Sammy (not his real name), about 30 years-old, moved out after living in the place for a good 3 years. I remember the day he moved in. He came with cars and bikes after his suburban parents bought the house for him. During his first weeks here some of the neighbors went out of their way to say hello but Sammy was aloof. He obviously didn’t want to be bothered to get to know the people on the block. What Sammy did for a living was a mystery, but his pattern was to leave the house everyday around noon and return in the early evening.

Sammy could have been living on a mountain top because he never made eye contact with neighbors. You could pass Sammy in the street and he’d have one of those Village of the Damned ‘straight on’ stares like he was sleepwalking. Sammy’s house was a large space with interesting room patterns. I know because I used to be friends with the couple, Walter and Betty (not their real names), who lived there before their move to Washington State. Walter, Betty and I didn’t become friends until their last two years on the street. Who knows why it took us so long to strike up a friendship. One day they invited me to dinner so I got to sample Walter’s gourmet cooking. On warm summer days, Walter would invite me over for a swim in his pool. The pool was a fairly deep above ground monstrosity with a sturdy wooden deck, set among very large trees. After a swim, we’d catch an iced tea during which Walter would talk about his favorite poet, Gary Snyder. I wasn’t happy when Walter and Betty announced they were moving west. I was getting used to going over there for dinner and swimming in their pool, and then inviting them over to my place for patio parties. Friendships like this don’t come easily. You can say hello to neighbors, even chat with them on the street for years and still never be invited over to their place. When Walter and Betty moved out, the house wasn’t empty for long. One day I spotted a suburban looking couple talking with the realtor. The couple had driven up in a Lexis, which spelled m-o-n-e-y. A week or two after that a big moving truck appeared, and Sammy appeared with his bushy black hair and an army of friends. The friends, all men, were scruffy in a hip way although they all had the same type of manufactured beard. They moved in quickly and within days held a massive outdoor party around Walter’s old pool. Sammy’s friends built a large bonfire and started a barbecue. The party lasted until the wee hours. Then at 4 or 5 AM I was awakened by a suburban girl, one of Sammy’s party guests, crying under my bedroom window. She was so drunk she found it hard to make sense of her sentences however I tried my best to make out what she was saying. In the end, I couldn’t decipher her drunken valley girl ‘up talk’ although it seemed some boy had dumped her. I was curious about Sammy for a short time but after a while I stopped caring. There was no reason to say hello, especially if his response was going to be something like a smug nod. Sammy’s outdoor parties were becoming more and more frequent. Party guests, driving in from the western Main Line were double parking on our tiny street. Sammy acquired strings of Japanese party lights and strung them along the tree branches so that from my house his yard looked like a massive house boat in New Orleans. The parties got progressively louder and wilder yet it was fascinating to see how every party began as low key events but as the night wore on, and as more alcohol was consumed, the voices got louder and louder. Eventually the voices became so pitched it sounded like twenty men screaming at one another.

If the screaming prevented me from falling asleep, I assumed many of my neighbors were experiencing the same thing. I’d turn on the AC or put fans in my bedroom window to muffle the noise but like the racket from a plague of locusts, the voices would always resurface. And among these voices there would always be the sound of a woman crying. “That makes 4 crying women in 30 days,” I’d tell friends. ‘What do they do to women over there?” Sammy acquired a succession of roommates to help pay the mortgage. Generally the roommates were in their twenties and never stayed long. At first the roommates were part of Sammy’s social circuit but then I noticed a change. They seemed to be living independently, especially the lost looking Irish guy who seemed to be terrified of strangers and whose large dog seemed to be his only friend. He would sit glum- faced on Sammy’s stoop staring into space. For a time I thought he was hearing impaired. Some of Sammy’s roommates moved out in the middle of the night although they were very quickly replaced with new roommates. At one of the parties, the invited guests double and triple parked on the sidewalk up and down the street, upsetting the neighbors. Somebody called the police, and ten of Sammy’s party guests got parking tickets. “These people have no idea how the city works,” I told a friend. Sammy acquired so many roommates I lost count of them. Prohibitive housing and rental costs were really impacting people in their twenties, and Sammy’s house was proof of this. Nobody could afford to live on their own. I called Walter and Betty and told them that their former home had become a gigantic hipster commune complete with dogs, motorcycles, bonfires, and beautiful white women in long dreadlocks. “It’s a sight to behold although nobody on the street has made friends with them because they don’t seem to want to get to know anybody.” I told Walter and Betty that Sammy had decided to get rid of the pool and chop down the oldest and grandest tree on the property. Walter and Betty were meticulous home owners, but very soon Sammy began to let things slip. After all, it really wasn’t his house. His parents found the house for him. They were the ones who appreciated the house but they probably had high hopes that Sammy would come to appreciate it himself one day. It wasn’t long before the house began to look shabby, although all the women who visited or lived there seemed to be the same type: tall and elegant looking with long beautiful hair. They also dressed like fashion models, mostly in long flowing dresses. Even if beautiful women are not your thing, no one could deny the astounding beauty of these creatures. They seemed to go in and out of Sammy’s house at all hours. The men, by contrast, were doughy looking with thick Clark Kent glasses and hairy necks. “This is proof,” a comedian friend of mine commented, “that many pretty women like money and power.” For a period of a year, especially in winter when there were no leaves on the trees, anyone walking on the sidewalk could look right into Sammy’s front window and see somebody watching Homer Simpson. The parties continued, the beer kept flowing, and the male chorus of voices kept getting louder and louder. Sometimes I could make out what was being said. There were stories about work but more often than not there was no smooth narrative at all, just discombobulated half sentences with long pauses as well as the overuse of the word ‘like’ and finally unexplained yells as if someone had inadvertently sat on a possum. “Like…I mean, but like….Yeah, you know. What the f-ck!” (Repeat 50 times and you have the party conservation).

A few neighbors, eager to build bridges, continued to attempt to make contact with Sammy, but to no avail. Two weeks ago in a bizarre replay of 3 years ago, the suburban parents returned in the same Lexis. Standing in front of the house they whispered to one another before knocking on Sammy’s door. The parents had to knock a long time before one of the roommates answered although he didn’t open the door but talked to them through an open slat. Some sort of negotiation seemed to be in progress, but what? The very next day at least two of the roommates moved out and six days after that it was Sammy’s turn. Sammy left on his bike, never to be seen again. Thom Nickels

GROUCHO MARX CATHOLICISM: PLAIN VESTMENTS AND OPEN BORDERS

A cousin of mine told me he had a photograph of Robert F. Prevost, now Pope Leo XIV, dressed up as Groucho Marx. Apparently the photograph was taken when Prevost was a student at Villanova University and wound up at the same Halloween masquerade party some relatives of mine attended.

Although the Groucho photograph has never been published, it does hang on a wall, framed, in the home of a niece of mine. The Leo XIV-as-Groucho photo got me thinking: could there be something in Marx’s comedy routines that might hold clues regarding the trajectory of Leo’s papacy, especially when it comes to the question of immigration, open borders and the proper way to treat migrants? Let’s begin with the appointments made by the former Villanova University grad who prides himself on his great devotion to “Our Lady” and the messages at Fatima but who nevertheless promotes liberal and radical priests to positions of authority the same way his predecessor stacked the decks in favor of a reformist theology that can hardly be called Catholic. Papal appointments indicate where a pope is “going” in terms of ideology and philosophy, and Leo’s appointments somehow recall Groucho’s comment on honesty and fairness when the comedian quipped: “The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake those two things, you’ve got it made.” Leo appointed Reverend Canon Fr. Beat (no relation to Allen Ginsberg) Grogli as Bishop of the Diocese of Saint Gallen in Switzerland. Grogli was first elected bishop by the Saint Gallen cathedral chapter, as the custom in Switzerland is for the cathedral parish to elect a bishop and then offer the candidate for the pope’s approval. Leo approved the election of the progressive bishop-elect who has publicly supported the movement for female deacons. Grogli, who dresses like a Methodist minister in a beige clerical collar, has called for the Church to adapt to the times and revamp its views on marriage, sexual morality and contraception. He’s also famous for wearing a multicolored court jester hat at Mass during carnival time. What a cool, radical guy!

Switzerland, of course, has always been a hotbed for radical Catholicism. The deceased Swiss theologian Hans Kung, who eschewed clerical dress for a suit and tie and allegedly shacked up with a mistress while performing his duties as a priest, helped brand Swiss Catholicism as the most avant-garde in the world. In a 2013 interview with ‘Spiegel,’ Kung stated: “I don’t believe in an eternal hell. Sartre says that hell is other people. People create their own hell — in wars like the one in Syria, for example, as well as with unbridled capitalism.” We have only to ponder Leo XIV’s fixed, benevolent-albeit often goofy-smile to understand how he hoodwinked onlookers when he was first elected pope and appeared at the central window of St. Peter’s Basilica in traditional vestments to give his first blessing. The scene gave authentic Catholics hope that here, finally, was a pope who would restore a fractured Catholicism. “He prays his Latin; he even prayed with and complimented Eastern Catholic bishops for the Byzantine liturgy and how those rites generate a sense of mystery and a sense of the sacred,” many said during the first weeks of his papacy. I was among this group of naïve, hopeful believers, but then I came to my senses. That’s because with Groucho Marx, you never know what’s up. Take marriage, for example. “Take the wives out of marriage and there wouldn’t be any divorces … In union there is alimony,” the comedian said, chewing on his cigar. The Villanova guy in papal dress concurred more or less when he gave a green light for the continuation of Fiducia supplican, or the blessing of homosexual and “irregular” heterosexual couples.

The Catholic catechism says one thing but Fiducia supplican says another. Which is it? It can’t be both. The real Groucho even denigrated belief in an afterlife while managing to get listeners to laugh. “You only live once, despite what Jesus or somebody said … Go out to the garden and tear a flower in four. It won’t be a flower again.” Groucho’s most famous line, “I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member,” might have that Villanova guy adding: “But if I have to be a member, I will change it beyond recognition.” Consider Leo’s first United States appointment of Fr. Michael M. Pham as Bishop of San Diego. One of Bishop Pham’s first actions was to appear at the local courthouse to support migrants waiting for hearings. Supporting people who have entered the country illegally in the name of sentimental humanitarianism is distilling Catholic theology down to its dumbest common denominator. Letting criminals into your country in the name of Christian charity is the sort of suicide Islam hopes weak, weepy Christians will adopt as a universal standard. Meanwhile in El Paso, Texas, a number of auxiliary bishops and religious sisters (nuns in secular dress) regularly show up at immigration court to show solidarity with migrants who appear at required hearings. This is another example of weepy suicidal Christian sentimentality, comparable to the parents of a junkie allowing him to move home despite the fact he will steal and sell the family treasures to support hisMeanwhile habit. Let me add that you almost never see a religious sister in a habit protesting alongside pro-migrant bishops or other Catholic clergy. The activist nuns who take part in these protests are generally Sisters of Saint Joseph in short ducktail hairdos that call to mind elder lesbian Pride organizers. These sisters speak of Jesus only as a social activist and social revolutionary. The ‘old Jesus’ who said “Go and sin no more,” doesn’t exist for them. These so-called nuns used to wear cross or crucifix pins as a sign of their commitment to religious life but even these iconic symbols have been exchanged for bland Costco-style jewelry. This is the new Catholicism of Francis, now being promoted by Leo the Groucho, the Catholicism of social justice, with immigration eclipsing abortion as the issue of the day. This fact caught the attention of the New York Times: “But now they (US bishops) are increasingly invoking Pope Leo XIV’s leadership and Pope Francis’s legacy against Mr. Trump’s immigration actions, and prioritizing humane treatment of immigrants as a top public issue. They are protesting the president’s current domestic policy bill in Congress, showing up at court hearings to deter Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and urging Catholics and non-Catholics alike to put compassion for humans ahead of political allegiances.” Pope Francis appointee, Cardinal McElroy of Washington, D.C., a progressive radical named specifically to counter the presidency of Donald Trump, is now making pronouncements in defense of illegal aliens. “The realities are becoming more ominous,” he said. “It is becoming clearer that this is a wholesale, indiscriminate deportation effort aimed at all those who came to the country without papers.” The latest twist in the Church’s sentimental embrace of illegal immigration comes from San Bernardino Roman Catholic Bishop Alberto Rojas, who recently issued a dispensation offering members of his diocese’s parishioners the option to stay home Sundays amid ongoing immigration enforcement sweeps. Rojas advised illegal aliens not to go to confession and rectify their trespassing offense, but to ignore it and “maintain their spiritual communion with Christ and His Church” by praying the rosary or reading scripture.” “If you can fake those two things, you’ve got it made,” as the real Groucho said. Thom Nickels

Pittsburgh is more beautiful than Philadelphia!

What about Pennsylvania’s other great city, the city of Pittsburgh? Is life in Pittsburgh better than life in Philadelphia? Is Pittsburgh’s downtown section more pleasing to the eye than Philadelphia’s?

My first glimpse of “the steel city” was from a Greyhound bus at 18 when I took a cross country trip to San Francisco. I’d been napping in my seat when the driver announced “Pittsburgh.” I woke with a start and spotted the Golden Triangle. For a second I felt what Brigham Young must have felt when he first laid eyes on the place that would later be called Salt Lake City: “This is the place!” I wanted to get out and explore, but the bus headed off into Ohio. I never saw Pittsburgh again. That changed a couple of years ago when I teamed up with friends Tom and Diana who were headed to Pittsburgh to visit their son and daughter-in-law for a 3-day visit. I didn’t have to think about it when they asked me if I wanted to join them. I packed my bags and before I knew it we were on the turnpike (with occasional detours on the Lincoln Highway) until at last Pittsburgh’s spectacular skyline came into view. There it was, just as I had remembered it from the Greyhound bus window, only the view was nicer: newer and taller skyscrapers, mountains and buildings perched on the tops of the great hills that surround the city. Most spectacular of all, were the multiple multicolored bridges in the middle of the city. So many bridges! Pittsburgh’s bridges have a fairyland quality to them and they contrast nicely with the houses, buildings and onion domed gold churches perched on the hills surrounding the downtown area. Philadelphia’s flat topography cannot match this singing, striking landscape. “Pittsburgh looks great from this angle,” Diana said, “but you wouldn’t want to live here.” I asked ‘why not?’ and was told that Pittsburgh is a very small town where everybody knows everybody, a kind of Mayberry with skyscrapers. Funny, I thought, this is what they say about Philly. Pittsburgh is also a huge sports town but we’re talking all consuming sports as in sports-as-a-reason-to-live and sports-as-religion. Nearly every bar and restaurant in the city has a big screen TV for any game that happens to be on. It doesn’t matter what kind of game—hockey, football, baseball or tennis—as long as it is…sports. Both Tom and Diana hate sports, and I can’t say I am a fan either. First impressions of a city are important. At first glance, Pittsburgh seems far less diverse than Philly. Tom and Diana told me that there are more redneck types in Pittsburgh than in Philly—I should note that both Tom and Diana are Democrats and tend to lump conservatives in with “rednecks.” Pittsburgh has made many “best lists” since the year 2000. Forbes Magazine, for instance, rates Pittsburgh as the nation’s most livable city. Pittsburgh beat out Honolulu, which came in second. The Farmers Insurance Group also voted Pittsburgh as third on a list of ten as the “Most Secure Places to live in the United States.” But the real topper is the city’s inclusion in one of the ‘hottest cities of the future,’ lists where it is called “The Next Hipster Haven.” (Philadelphia is also on this list as a city of art (murals) and culture.) Philadelphia isn’t the only city to call itself “the city of neighborhoods” because Pittsburgh uses the same line. Our first night on the town gave me a sense of the city’s smallness in comparison to Philadelphia’s never ending flat streetscapes. Pittsburgh is a big city in miniature, with miniature crime, miniature graffiti (or no graffiti at all), a highly walk able downtown section and of course all of those multicolored bridges and Byzantine churches. The city is ranked among the smartest in the nation. It’s been called a city of bookworms (despite the emphasis on sports). It has the best hospitals in the country, and (best yet) the most affordable housing. Many refer to it as a “hidden gem.” When travelers think of Pennsylvania they tend to think only of Philadelphia. ‘The Economist’ has rated Pittsburgh as the most livable city in the United States. When we visited Pittsburgh’s waterfront area, Three Rivers Park, where the Allegheny, Monongahela and Ohio Rivers meet, it was refreshing not to have to cross an I-95 (think Penn’s Landing) in order to get there. I also liked the way the waterfront piers meet the water as opposed to the elevated piers at Penn’s Landing. During my stay, I saw little or no graffiti nor did I spot a single homeless person with a cardboard sign. Perhaps I was in the wrong section of town, because I’m sure Pittsburgh has plenty of homeless people, but I couldn’t find any. The town has a 1960s’ time warp quality about it. As Tom, Diana and I watched the motorboats come and go along the piers, Tom reminded me that Pittsburgh isn’t really a Northeastern city at all but primarily a Midwestern city, then an Appalachian city and only lastly somewhat of a Northeastern city, but only somewhat. The Midwestern flavor of the town is probably why artist Andy Warhol left Pittsburgh on a Greyhound bus after his graduation from Carnegie Mellon. He needed a monolith badass city like New York, and he got it. After his death in 1987, his home town honored him with the Andy Warhol Museum and even a small bridge named the Andy Warhol Bridge. The Warhol Bridge is just down the street from the Andy Warhol Museum. People either love or hate Andy Warhol but in the museum there is only love. I saw large families with little children, teenagers, elderly folks on walkers or canes, and even a few people in wheelchairs inspecting the Campbell’s soup can paintings, the Liz, Marilyn and Elvis portraits, and even checking out the dicey Joe Dallesandro film stills and the Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers album covers. I think Warhol would have approved of the museum staff. Most are college students decked out in Warhol T-shirts and although observant and focused, the staffers don’t have that TSA-style museum security guard harshness that one sometimes encounters in standard art museums. The museum houses the complete set of Warhol’s 160 time capsule boxes and many photographs of Warhol’s youth and family, his early paintings and his later films and videos. In the Warhol video room I watched a black and white film that Warhol made of Lee Radziwill, John, Jr. and Caroline Kennedy a few years after JFK’s assassination. The movie was made one summer at the family’s private beach at Hyannis Port. We see John, Jr. peering into Warhol’s camera making goofy faces and then doing strange zombie contortions with his eyes. John, Jr. is about nine years old and Caroline is 11 or so. In another scene Warhol’s staff buries John, Jr. in the sand up to his neck and then (with sand) they make him a mermaid body from the neck down, even giving him big sand breasts and then arranging seaweed (as hair). John, Jr. is on a non stop giggle. At one point he complains that he just washed his hair and can’t get it dirty; then he announces that he has a head itch. A very slender Lee Radziwill walks along the surf in her barely modest string bikini, her wet pony tail looking oddly chic and very “New York.”

We ate in a lot of restaurants and found the food and ambiance to our liking. Popular are pubs with the kind of bar food you’d find at Standard Tap in Northern Liberties, only you won’t find breaded smelt, probably the most awful dish in the western hemisphere in any Pittsburgh pub. In Pittsburgh, as in Center City or Fishtown, popular restaurants mean long lines, especially at those places that do not take reservations. At one highly prized French eatery the lines were so long that patrons lingered outside with drinks or sat at the bar until called. Our wait was so long that the bartender offered us an apology. “I am so sorry about this,” she said. “I don’t know why these people aren’t moving. They have their checks but they won’t move. They won’t go home.”

The chronic sitters didn’t seem to care that other people had been waiting in line for more than an hour. We humorously suggested the restaurant print on its menu that customer occupation of a table not exceed two and a half hours. We found that one upscale Pittsburgh Korean restaurant in the Squirrel Hill area has this request printed at the bottom of their menu. Please do not allow your dining experience to exceed two and one half hours. When I returned to the City of Brotherly love, for at least a week I kept thinking of Pittsburgh’s beautiful multicolored bridges. Thom Nickels

Philadelphia AIA Lewis Mumford Architectural Journalism Award, 2005

Author of Philadelphia Architecture Honored With AIA Journalism Award The Philadelphia Chapter of the American Institute of Architects, a group with more than 1300 members, annually bestows this award "...on a regional journalist who has written articulately, responsibly, and with foresight on the contributions of architects to the built environment." The award will be given tonight at Davio's restaurant, 111 South 17th Street, from 6:00 to 7:30 pm. We are happy to say that much of Thom Nickels' writing has, for many years, found its way into our publications and that this award couldn't have come at a better time. In architecture, timing is, if not everything, extremely important. Ask them over at the Kimmel Center (or ask their attorneys). Just now Arcadia Publishing, a company which has become the largest publisher of regional history books in North America, publishing more than 3,000 titles, has released Philadelphia Architecture by Thom Nickels, a walk through Philadelphia streets past and present, highlights the richness and diversity of the city's architectural history. Besides being a journalist, Nickels is poet, and author of eight books, including Gay and Lesbian Philadelphia and Manayunk. It's not surprising that he came from a family of architects, growing up around drawing boards and architectural blueprints in the farmlands of Chester County. From a very early age, he read about architecture in his father's architectural magazines, and was fascinated, but his aversion to math prevented him from pursuing a career as an architect. During his alternate service during the Vietnam War, Nickels met famous Bauhaus architect, Walter Gropius. Gropius was dying at the time and needed a life-saving operation. Nickels struggled with a hospital physician to remove Gropius' bed from the small hospital room and roll it through the poorly designed hospital door. It was a scene of high irony and intensity: the world famous father of the Bauhaus School, which taught that form followed function, left this world "witnessing" a very bad function. Nickels knew at that moment he would someday write about architecture. During the 1970s, Nickels became a newspaper columnist and began to write a column in Philadelphia's Welcomat, one of the first gay-issues oriented columns in a large city weekly in the nation. He soon began publishing books in the mid-1980s. Nickels says that an Arcadia editor actually suggested one of two projects for him, "Philadelphia Architecture," or "Famous Philadelphians." Considering his family background, the first choice seemed best. He hasn't ruled out a book about famous Philadelphians. After taking the assignment, it took Nickels about a year to get the material together. Along the way Thom says he discovered that one of architect William Strickland's earliest known works is a Romanian Orthodox church in Northern Liberties. He tells us that, "This building has fallen into a state of disrepair and was/is largely hidden on a quiet neighborhood street. By including the building in my book," he asserts, " and by writing about the building for a newspaper where I am on staff I think I may have helped it secure publicity and hence some needed funding for restoration." Nickels maintains that doing the book caused him to have a new appreciation for Strickland in general. This appreciation went into high gear when he discovered that a club owner in Old City had painted another Strickland Greek Revival building a lurid blue. He adds regretfully, "An article I wrote about this in the Weekly Press attracted some attention and outrage but unfortunately the club owner has not yet been forced to remove the blue paint job." Our Contributing Editor tells us that he discovered that many of Philadelphia's great buildings were controversial when they were proposed or built. "In many cases," he says, "the rhetoric bantered about then (I am thinking especially of the uproar surrounding the design of the PSFS building) reminds me a great deal of the criticism I hear today when a new downtown skyscraper is proposed. It is only lately that Philadelphia has shed its oppressively conservative skin. The results of this can be seen in the city's striking new skyline." For Thom Nickels, buildings are like houses we have once lived in. "They are, he says, "a part of our present, past, and future. They comprise our world. They can be the mental repository of our emotions." There's a book signing party for the newly published Philadelphia Architecture, Wednesday, December 7, 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. at La Creperie Cafe, 1722 Sansom Street, given by Joseph Fox Bookseller, 1724 Sansom Street. From The Weekly Press (by Robert Christian) 8 December 2005

With Abbess Gabriela Platon, Voronet Monastery or the Sistine Chapel of the East, Romania