The Most Talented Psychic in Philadelphia

While wrapping up my book, Legendary Philadelphians of Center City (to be published this spring), I decided that I had to include the story of my friend, Arlene Ostapowicz. While there are "name brand" famous people in the book, the idea is also to include unconventional personalities, even notable eccentrics who are famous via "word of mouth." After all, I don't want the book to be the written version of a tacky TMZ celebrity show. There are many fine people in the "word of mouth fame" category. This brings me to Arlene, who is far less eccentric than she is... talented.

Though not an attorney, singer, artist or writer, Arlene has been a guest on many television and radio shows. In fact, she was once offered a guest spot on Bill Maher's show, Politically Incorrect, but had to decline because the live show was on too late at night. For several years she worked at The Courier Post of New Jersey and as a monthly commentator on an Atlantic City cable TV station. In the 1980s, she was in high demand with City Hall politicians and judges.

Her life as a City Hall consultant started when Councilwoman Joan Krajewski (now deceased) stopped at Arlene's place one day for a session. Krajewski had heard about Arlene's talents via "word of mouth," the most powerful advertising tool there is, and decided it was time for a reading. After the session, Krajewski became a fan and wanted to see Arlene on a regular basis. She liked what Arlene told her, not because it was what she wanted to hear, but because it was accurate stuff. Very soon, word of Arlene's talents, thanks to Krajewski, spread among the vast network inside City Hall, especially among the judges, some of whom contacted Arlene and asked for appointments.

The judges were so eager to see Arlene that they sent limos to her humble house in the city's Wissinoming section to pick her up and drive her back to their chambers. For the judges, the process must have been like ordering a delicious take-out lunch. Once delivered to their chambers, Arlene did her thing, after which she was quietly chauffeured home again. After a few months of this, Krajewski came up with an idea. She asked Arlene if she would see former mayor Frank Rizzo, who was then set on running for a new term as mayor. This was in the 1980s, when Rizzo had his famous radio show. Arlene agreed, and met Rizzo and Krajewski in a South Philadelphia house where the consultations began.

A little segue here: I met Rizzo in the 1980s and remember being awed by the size of the man. The guy was a giant, with hands the size of waffle irons and shoulders as wide as a Broad Street intersection. I was there to interview the man for a Center City newspaper, and was seated in a waiting area at the radio station when Rizzo walked in the room. When I first saw him I assumed he was part of the in-house security team because what I saw resembled a WWE wrestler. The face was unmistakable; however, it was Rizzo. After we shook hands, he led me to a sofa where we sat for the interview. Within minutes we were eyeball-to-eyeball, with the ex-mayor slapping my shoulder and calling me by my first name.

"So this is that magic charisma I've always heard about," I said to myself. The interview was a success.

Arlene never told me what Rizzo asked her, or even what she said to him (it's unprofessional to break confidences), but what went down must have impressed him because the next time he saw her, he said, "If I get elected, I'm going to get you an office in City Hall and put you on the payroll."

How's that for instant enthronement? Arlene was worth it, however. When she was on TV during the Goode administration and the city was on the verge of bankruptcy, she was asked by a reporter if the city would sink or swim, and she said swim, meaning that the federal government would come to the city's rescue at the last minute. She provided other details, of course, and when the prediction came true, there were more limos at her door.

Naturally, you'd think that a woman this talented would charge the moon for consultations, or if not that, then she'd certainly move into an exotic penthouse with busts of Egyptian gods and goddesses, get her hair done every few minutes, and start to strut like a diva. She'd also have to have a press agent who screened calls and booked customers, and then she'd have to hit the lecture circuit, all for a very big fee of course. Our culture, up to its ears in gross materialism, overflows with corruption, whether it is how Philly (house) Sheriff Sales are conducted, how local firehouses are funded, or how "important" people put on airs. Had Arlene allowed her head to swell, she might even have started her own religion, a la Sylvia Brown (RIP). But no, here she was, still in her almost cold water flat in the Northeast with its ramshackle porch doing consultations for the high and mighty, but also for so called "little people," who she says are just as valuable to her.

"I never wanted to be famous," she told me. This was true even when she studied metaphysics in England in 1972 and became an organizer of the Atlantean Society, and then came back to the U.S. to start a chapter here. The chapter studied things like auras and everything related to the paranormal, even possession and exorcisms.

A good many people equate people with a natural gift of prophecy (like Arlene), with the dark side. I don't know where this comes from. Instead of something good, they see sinister shades of Aleister Crowley, Anton Lavey, black magic or Satanic stars. Rather than these monsters, Arlene honors a number of Catholic saints, like Saint Therese of Lisieux. Or you may hear her exclaim how she has a special devotion to the Sacred Heart. She also says the rosary -- she believes in angels, and she sometimes makes believers out of skeptics. She will tell you that St. Thomas was the medium for the 12 apostles, and that the gift of prophecy has always been with the world, from Moses on, and didn't suddenly disappear with the death and resurrection of Christ. This is why she is able to attract people who wouldn't otherwise venture into these realms. Like Jeanne Dixon, who was also a devote Catholic.

Arlene sees no spiritual danger in her work. She wants to exercise her gift for the good of people, even if she wants to get paid, but not too much, for a lot of money inevitably attracts corruption.

All types come to her: real estate agents, crusty businessmen who battle out ugly deals, worried moms and dads, nurses and physicians, judges, politicians and even other talented people who see the future. They all come and want to know. Some ask how she can stand to be so humble and charge so little when she could be sitting on Easy Street.

The Philadelphia Police Department has also come to her, usually in the form of a detective knocking on her door, asking for help to solve a murder or a missing person case. She has worked with the police on many crimes, such as the Dolores Della Penna murder in 1972, the Candace Clothier killing in 1968, as well as far more recent cases.

She told me about her experiences in a possessed house in Bridesburg near All Saints parish. The malevolent presence was so bad that when the home owner tried to get the pastor of All Saints to come by to do some prayers, the poor priest couldn't get up the steps. A force kept pushing him back. With her Atlantean Society friends, Arlene says that she then went into the house and to the troubled room in question where her group formed a circle, held hands and began some prayers when something unbelievable happened. She says that she was pushed all the way across the floor, as if gliding on ice, to the very edge of the stairs.

While there's no way to prove to skeptics who laugh or sneer at the paranormal, those of us who've had a "Ostapowizc" moment, know better.

House of Cards

Things we missed (so far) in January: Russian Christmas
and a friend's visit from California.

SANITATION AND THE MUMMER'S PARADE

The Local Lens
Published • Wed, Jan 08, 2014

By Thom Nickels

I didn’t expect to attend the 114th Mummers Parade, but there I was with friends Tara, Walt and Bob walking up Broad Street to the Union League, the only place where the string bands stop and play during their long strut up Broad from South Philly. Having watched the Mummers in the late 1970s and in the early 1980s, the fact that string bands like Aqua, Woodland, Quaker City, Fralinger and Avalon only play in front of the Union League (and then later in front of the judges and TV cameras), is just a little bit shocking.

In prior days the string bands were quite generous when it came to the number of tunes they belted out. If they saw a highly appreciative crowd, say at Broad and Locust or Broad and Spruce, they would offer a song and a strut. Unfortunately, those crowd-pleasing days are over. Since the Mummers went corporate, money is the operative word; and since time is money and money is everything, little or no attention is paid to the appreciative crowds along the way. Of course, there is always the outdoor Mummers party on 2 Street, where the string bands still let loose, but 2 Street, compared to Center City, might be compared to a small fishbowl. There’s no escaping the fact that what happens today on 2 Street, used to happen on Broad.

In the new world of Mummery, the string bands save their heart and soul for the TV cameras but they will, however, play a tune or two in front of the Union League because, as Tara told me, the Union League gives the Mummers huge annual cash donations to do so.

Money talks!

The result of all this is that the city has a far different parade than it did in the days before corporate sponsorship. New Year’s Day in Philly had a decided New Orleans feel but that party-hardy ambience has been reduced to an event created by Walt Disney.

The new sanitized, "Disney" Mummers is just a little more exciting than watching a 4th of July parade in a small town in Utah. In fact, compared to what the parade was like in the 1970s and early 80s, the parade has become a practice run for performances before TV cameras and for those special shows in the Convention Center. In prior years, the parade usually lasted until midnight. There was an exhilarating feeling on Broad Street then, an actual atmosphere of joyful revelry and personal involvement as people on the street camped out or huddled curbside, staying late into the night or until the last Mummers marched on past. It was that one day of the year when you were allowed to take the party mentality to the limit, stay out late and drink on the street, or sit on a lawn chair by an alleyway while dressed in Mummers glitz. This healthy venue for letting go was great for Philadelphians everywhere. It provided an air of spontaneity and freedom. People would host all day parties along South Broad Street and guests would come and go until the late evening hours knowing that the parade would still be happening when they went back outside.

The new corporate Parade ends at five o’clock like the roll up of a security gate in front of a retail store. By six, the sidewalks are as clean as they were before the first Mummers set foot on Broad Street. While this has an antiseptic, "clean Jean" feel to it, it’s also somewhat spooky. The corporate parade has lost its spontaneous character and patina. The "fun" in today’s Mummers is dispensed like those building passes you get once you pass through security at the lobby desk. The truth is that sometimes real fun involves a little bit of messiness and elements of the unpredictable.

Big money was certainly on Mayor Rendell’s mind when, in 1995, he rerouted the parade to include Market Street so that it could "play to" the proposed Disney entertainment center. But both the rerouting of the Mummers and the Disney complex proved to be complete failures.

Despite the parade’s corporate veneer, our group still managed to have fun. After listening to one string band play outside the Union League (thanks to that hefty cash donation), we headed into the Ritz Carlton bar where the atmosphere was as lively as a 1920s speakeasy. Walton, generous to a fault, bought rounds of red wine as two women sitting next to him proceeded to comment on his British scarf, which resembled something The Who would wear. The women prodded Walton with questions. "That’s an English scarf. We’re Irish. Where are you from? I’m American," the younger of the two said. For some reason, she thought that Walton was a recent immigrant, so he had to tell her that his Dutch family came over on the Mayflower. You can’t get more American than the Mayflower.

Conversations sometimes get skewed at bars, especially on New Year’s Day. Before we left the Ritz and headed to a place called Time, our Irish friend cushioned her good-bye with a warm handshake and some political comments: She told us that she hates Congress, supports Hilary Clinton for president, and is in love with the views of Rick Santorum. That’s quite a stretch.

Leaving the bar Time—where there was a live band and where one guy was happily dancing with himself--we were once again on the streets of Center City, the quiet, dead streets of Center City where there was no evidence of a Parade at all as the sanitation squads, out in force, did their corporate best to erase all the rustic reminders of the Broad Street strut.

Certainly not like the old days when you’d see groups of stragglers limping home or huddled on stoops and street corners while blowing the last silver paper horns of New Year’s Day.

CITY BEAT ICON MAGAZINE January 2014

ICON MAGAZINE City Beat, January 2014


We headed to the Suzanne Roberts Theater to catch Nerds, the recently rejuvenated Hal Goldberg musical that created a buzz on the Roberts stage in 2007. Then as now, the epic story of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates took the audience by storm. The final scene, with Jobs in Heaven, was the jolt we needed (besides the give-way Nerds glasses) before heading to the post-play reception where a joyous Sara Garonzik shook a lot of hands. Though many Roberts regulars were not present, there were still crowds around the buffet table (food is the new gold). We chatted with Neal Zoren who let it be known that Nerds may be headed to Broadway. While we didn’t wear the Nerd glasses immediately (like the so many of the millennials present), when we put them on in the subway we swear we heard somebody murmur, “Bill Gates!”

We headed to PAFA to meet the effervescent Tish Ingersoll, and check out another alumni art show. Miniature canvasses lined the walls of the former PAFA bookstore but we preferred the paintings in the room’s small alcove which also doubles as a good conversation space. With Lisa Heyman, Noel Miles and PAFA student Charles Schultz, we said hello to artist Bill Scott although Scott left before he could hear our discussion about whether the miniatures could be merged into a single collage of Jane Golden-proportions. Our least favorite pieces were the Miami Beach glitz style pet portraits with jewelry embedded into the frames. We topped the evening off with a walk to Dirty Franks’ (where we hoped to meet poet Frank Sherlock) in order to catch “Cohabitation,” a photography exhibit exploring the merging of classical and modern styles in Philly. We spotted Thomas Carroll, an expert on Wissahickon German mystic, Johannes Kelipus, and Walton Van Winkle, artist/rancetour and a descendent of Cornelius Van Winkle, the publisher of Washington Irving’s first book. Van Winkle’s image of the Cira Center-- one of the more arresting pieces in the show—made us forget Dirty Frank’s reputation as a community match maker: more people here have met their spouses (and 11th hour pickups) than in almost any other bar in the city, despite Dirty Frank’s brash Wall mart-style lighting. Our booth, for instance, was directly under a high intensity (film noir interrogation) bulb, which made us think of old Glenn Ford films and which put us eye to eye with a Zoe Strauss imitation photo of a haggard and potentially angry woman (Kensington?) who was staring hard at something in the distance.



Sometimes we perform wedding ceremonies for couples who have problems with legalistic churches. Julie and Frank’s wedding at the First Unitarian Church in Center City was one for the books: Stretch limo, Rose pedals from China, candles, not to mention flows of happy tears. The reception and dinner on the 33rd Floor of the PSFS Building afterwards opened our eyes to the faults of the International Style. We’re not talking architecture but about the building’s use as a hotel. Maybe it was the holidays, but there were always crowds around the elevators. Whether one pressed Up or Down, the process took 15 minutes as agitated passengers did their best to look nonplussed although some could not suppress a sneer, a rolling of the eyes or an exasperated laugh. The Kabuki Theatre-sized lobby was no consolation either: it transformed small crowds into elbow-to-elbow congestion. For a design comparison, we headed across the street to the Marriot where the lobby was much more spacious and empty, but where the line to Starbucks snaked interminably out the door and into the lobby. It was packed with young female Irish dancers practicing intricate leg maneuvers that made their curly manes of hair bounce, a scene that inevitably made us think (somewhat tenderly) of city film rep, Sharon Pinkenson.

The Crystal Room (in Macy’s) was better before they carted out the original chandelier and replaced it with a faux imitation. We still loved our time under the lights celebrating The Attic’s 20th Anniversary Gala, Unlocking the Future. You have to love an organization that starts out in 1993 as tiny, weekly support group for lgbt teens and then grows into multi-service giant. The Who’s Who LGBT event kept us recognizing faces—from Mark Segal and Malcolm Lazin to a teacher we had at Great Valley High in Malvern. We chatted and exchanged smiles at the bar with an Asian/Latino/ couple (of indeterminate sex) as they sipped Shirley Temples. We also enjoyed watching Carrie Jacobs, PhD, The Attic’s Executive Director, being the belle of the ball. We wanted to ask Carrie to dance, as well as Philly Pride’s Franny Price, but the bulk of the dance time was taken up with auctioneering. We felt somewhat impoverished as smartly dressed couples threw out huge bid numbers, as if money grew on faux chandeliers. The Attic celebration was a superb compliment to the Philadelphia FIGHT for Life Gala at the Union League, where former Governor Ed Rendell was the official honoree for his long term commitment to AIDS/HIV communities. We met Chip Alfred, FIGHT’s new Director of Communications, Public Relations & Events, and told him how happy and relaxed he looked in his new position.

We admit to having reoccurring dreams of moving into a large and affordable Center City apartment house. This led us to the offices of Carol Sano, Resident Sales Manager of The Franklin Residences, who took us on a guided tour. The DiBruno Brothers market just off the lobby had us sampling different cheeses, and our tour of the 18th and 19th penthouses, had us immersed in skyline fantasies. If we ever sell out house, we’re moving to the Franklin, if only because of the rows of original framed Horace Trumbauer (Benjamin Franklin Hotel) blue prints that lined the corridor to the fitness room.




Over the years, we’ve noticed a tendency, especially among millennials, to travel in packs of ten or more when they head to clubs. We don’t know when this trend started but it is now at full tilt. Stand for a time at the El stop at Front and Girard on a weekend night and you will witness millennial armies walking in unison up Girard Avenue. When we were 21, we never went out on the town with this many people. We had friends, of course, and would arrange to do things with one o two at a time, but never ten or fifteen. The millennials always return to the El in much smaller numbers, which would make some (but not us) ask: What caused the downsizing? While it may be possible to corral fifteen people to leave from point A, keeping them together for the duration of a pub crawl just isn’t possiible. The millennials who do walk back to the El alone usually hail a cab rather than wait for SEPTA. Waiting curbside, alone, for a bus seems to be the last thing they want to do. While the city can be a wonderful place, there’s always talk of danger, some of it warranted and some of it exaggerated. The people who exaggerate the dangers have the edge every time. Their message has saturated the suburbs. We know how suburbanites exaggerate their dislike of the city: how two murders becomes twenty, how every dilapidated neighborhood, even those experiencing high gentrification, harbors a rapist or two, a knife wielding maniac, muggers, or homeless people ready to breathe on you with their stale fish breath. In the Teflon shopping malls of Exton or Radnor, there are no such horrors, although death by boredom is the number one killer there..

While we love a cute baby as much as anyone else, we don’t think that infants in swaddling clothes belong next to corporate buffet tables filled with sushi and gourmet cheeses. For starters, some of the babies we’ve seen at these functions look like they were born yesterday.

While attending (the otherwise wonderful) Voith & Mactavish Architects holiday party celebrating their new offices at 2401 Walnut Street, we noticed a small child being taken out of a stroller and placed on the floor of the reception room while party goers circled the stroller with drinks, plates of crab, blue cheese and slices of roast pig. Not only was the stroller blocking much needed room in that confined space, but the baby’s daddy insisted on giving the child walking lessons in the middle of the floor, making it necessary for guests to take “design” detours around them in order to avoid a collision. Daddy, meanwhile, was all smiles and not the least embarrassed about the public display. He reminded us of a fisherman waiting for a bite only in this case he was fishing for compliments. While a few party goers did stop and say, “Oh, what a cute little baby!” most looked the other way and ignored the show, almost as if they were thinking, “Haven’t you ever heard of a babysitter?”


The world of pet ownership has changed drastically in the last twenty years. We got a sense of this when we watched Sunday Bloody Sunday, an old film by John Schlesinger (starring Murray Head and Glenda Jackson), that we first saw in the Seventies. The London-based love story shows the death of the family dog when the dog is hit by a car while racing across the street. The reaction of the characters at the death stunned us. They frown, look a little distraught, but within seconds they recompose themselves and talk about “getting another one,” as if they were talking about replacement ping pong balls. In today’s more pet emphatic environment, there would be considerable grief at the death, possibly even an extreme reaction comparable to the death of a child.

We did our best to cover The Woodland’s Second Annual Madeira Party, but were told “No press invited.” What would The Woodland’s namesake, William Hamilton have to say about this? We’re pretty sure this is it: “The will of the world is never the will of God.”.
Happy New Year~!




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The Philly Pops as Mood Changer

When I went to see the Philly POPS Christmas concert at the Kimmel Center with my friend Vanessa, I wasn't expecting much. I wasn't expecting much because Christmas music is in a special category. It's not classical music, rock or jazz, and it is not hip or edgy. Christmas carols have no beat and you can't dance to them. Not only that, but all too often what passes for Christmas music is played to death in supermarkets and retail stores. There's so much of it that your ears tune out after a while. How many times can one listen to Jose Feliciano's Feliz Navidad without wanting to jump off a cliff?

It's been a long time since I've heard a complete Christmas concert with all the songs I learned as a boy. The Kimmel Center auditorium wasn't overly crowded when we headed to our seats although there was a respectable crowd. There were a lot of parents in the audience since the program said there'd be a lot of kids on stage, not only the Philadelphia Boys Choir but an all-girls chorus from a Delaware County Christian school. We were also looking forward to hearing Opera sensation Angela Brown, as well as The African Episcopal Church of St. Thomas Gospel Choir. As it turned out, the St. Thomas choir sang Gospel music -- and yes, they had the place jumping.

I'm not one to pound my foot, clap my hands, stand up and shout 'Hallelujah!' as the sweat pours from my forehead, but there's a lot to be said for Gospel music. Many of the songs from the St. Thomas choir had members of the audience swaying their heads and clapping their hands.

Music often "gifts" the listener with an array of mental images. These images can include scenes from the past, images of loved ones, of people past and present, and yes, it can even inspire feelings of love (feelings of hate and annoyance almost never intrude). Feelings of love came over the audience when the Philadelphia Boys Choir sang "Ave Maria", a song composed in 1853. "Ave Maria" was one of my (deceased) mother's favorites, along with "The Little Drummer Boy" (1957). "Ave Maria" is one of those songs that people either love or hate, but even among those who hate it, the song almost always seems to have a quieting effect.

The other songs presented, like "Jingle Bells" (1857), brought into play many Christmas stereotypes: snowy nights, trees, gifts with red ribbons, money spent, spiked Egg Nog, coal in stockings, and Santa Claus. The song slammed me back into childhood's nadir, as did "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing."

Seated in the row ahead of me was the mother of a girl singer in that all-girl Delaware County chorus. The forty-something woman had long strawberry blond hair, and sat quietly in her seat until her daughter's chorus was introduced, at which point she became very animated, smiling and clapping as if she'd won the lottery. The mother's happiness radiated outward like a blast of electrons. Her pride in her daughter was so huge I imagined there must have been an unusual reason for it. Perhaps her daughter had overcome some challenging handicap; maybe she had had a hard time getting into the chorus, or had recovered from a serious illness. The mother's happiness was beyond the proud parent syndrome. At this point I attempted to spot the woman's daughter in the long lineup of girls facing the stage, but the task was hopeless. There were just too many girls with strawberry blond hair.

To my right, sitting beside Vanessa, was another woman, perhaps in her sixties who sat with her husband. This woman, oddly enough, was also a strawberry blond (probably dyed) but she was far more circumspect in her applause. I say this because immediately after the St. Thomas Gospel Choir concluded its 'raise-high-the-roof beams' numbers, she leaned over in my direction me and said, "Do you suppose the rest of the people on stage were wondering when they would ever stop all that shouting?"

Why, I wondered, did she feel comfortable saying this to me?

It was a benign enough comment, proving that you can't love every song presented in a concert format, as I would soon discover when the Philadelphia Boys Choir sang Feliz Navidad. This song, for whatever reason, has made me nervous and fidgety since childhood. As a boy I'd switch dials on the radio whenever it came on and then switch back again when I thought the song was over. When I couldn't switch the dial, I'd make fun of it by dancing around the house while making faces as the singers sang, "I wanna wish you a Merry Christmas" (Repeat three times). To this day, whenever I hear "Feliz Navidad" I want to mimic the refrain in unflattering ways.

As if getting my goat for my musical intolerance, when I went to WAWA for coffee the morning after the concert, wouldn't you know that the customer ahead of me in line said "Feliz Navidad" to the cashier after paying his bill. Doubling the impact, the cashier replied in kind, so I got two "Feliz Navidad's" in a row. Talk about a double whammy with no time to switch dials -- I mean... lines.

When Philly POPS played "The Little Drummer Boy" I not only remembered my mother humming the tune in our house in Malvern, but I recalled Maurice Ravel's "Bolero", upon which "The Little Drummer Boy" is based. If you've never heard of Ravel's "Bolero", I suggest you check it out and listen, because if you even have a small amount of music appreciation you'll love the way the song intensifies and accelerates into a slow fever pitch. (Do this even if you hate classical music, because Bolero is different and generally appeals to people who have no time for Beethoven, Chopin or Bach.)

Anyway, sitting there listening to "The Little Drummer Boy", my mind drifted to "Bolero", and to the first time I heard the song at age 14 while visiting the home of a friend. At that time my friend's mother was playing the composition as she paced her living room and kitchen (with a glass of wine) while keeping step to the music that slowly built and built until the crescendo end. To this day I can't listen to "Bolero" without seeing the face of Zada, my friend's mother, doing her meditative pacing.

During the concert, Conductor David Charles Abell kept repeating how the holiday means reuniting with friends and family, forgiving slights and injuries and showing warmth towards neighbors and friends. This message, delivered with the music, was producing a lightness of feeling in the audience. Even the grandmother to my right, who had poked fun at the Gospel singers, seemed friendlier as a result.

After the concert, Vanessa and I hailed a cab and made our way to the Market Street East station, where she took the train to her East Falls apartment, and where I boarded the Market-Frankford L to Front and Girard. Stepping on the L with the vibrations of "Jingle Bells", "Silent Night", and other carols in my head, I was lost in a "feel good" mental space while looking at the city weary expressions on the faces of the people in the train. Perhaps I had the same expression on my face and just didn't know it, but somehow I don't think so. This Christmas concert, despite my skepticism about attending it at first, had worked its magic.

(From The Spirit and The Huffington Post_

City Beat Column: Robinson Luggage, Diane Burko, Food, Henri David, Timothy Rub and Peggy King

December CITY Beat Column ICON MAGAZINE 2013

Wave your white hankies for Robinson Luggage, the Broad and Walnut superstore that kept Philadelphians happy for years. We shopped there a long time ago for a large wheelie that saw airports in Helsinki, Rome, Paris, Oslo, Copenhagen and Stockholm. The wheelie took quite a beating by rough airport (and TSA) handlers. When we headed back to Robinson’s last year for a replacement, we found that prices had doubled. Close to one thousand dollars for a new wheelie sent us straight to Macy’s where we found what we were looking for. Nancy Center, the store’s VP, told local media that the closure “was heartbreaking,” and blamed “declining sales” while posters on Philly.com complained of Robinson’s exorbitant prices. Founded in 1927, Robinson’s weathered a bad storm in 2008 when Phillies fans, drunk on a World Series win, looted the place. Prices at Robinson seemed to rise after the incident, as if the family-owned business imposed a (secret) penalty tax because of the rowdy violation. What we don’t understand is why sports thugs, who aren’t generally known for their good taste, wanted stylish luggage anyway. Perhaps they wanted to bag their bad character and carry it elsewhere.

We thought of The little Engine that Could while boarding the Diane Burko (rental) bus, to make our way to the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick to catch the artist’s latest exhibition: Freeze Frame: Art and the Cryosphere (until July 31st). A glacier-cheeked Burko presented a stunning slide show of her photographs and paintings of glaciers negativity impacted by climate change. Loyal Burkoites filled the hall and delighted in the artist’s account of her 5 week sojourn to the North Pole with husband Richard. We felt like shivering in the well heated room (pictures of glaciers do that) while enjoying the artist’s tales of how she handled downtime in the land of the lost: editing a film while her sailing ship compatriots battled an on board illness. The Zimmerli is an excellent small museum. We spotted a sculpture of Stalin as Michelangelo's David (buff totalitarianism?) as well as fascinating collection of French 18th and 19th century puppets. By the end of the night we were convinced that glaciers, like a good Baked Alaska, are indeed rare delights, especially when they are capped with (conversational) ice floes like Elizabeth Osborne, grand dame of Philly painters, and Carol Saline of Philadelphia Magazine.

Is food the new gold? The cut in SNAP benefits or food stamps and the rise in food prices in general got us thinking about the city’s free food banks, where the less fortunate go for sustenance. We headed over to the PhilAbundance food dispensary at 601 W. Lehigh Avenue, one of many such free food banks in the city, where on designated days you can see long lines of people waiting to obtain very small amounts of canned goods, meats, milk and cheese. An official there told us that just a year ago the lines outside the Lehigh Avenue outlet were moderate in comparison to the serpentine lines one finds today. Taking in the scene, we noticed that a good many people were elderly, and that many brought portable stools or fold up chairs (Diner en Blanc?) since the line moves at a snail’s pace. Volunteers stock the food bank and help guide participants through a small room packed with selections that vary from week to week. Regular freebies include canned beans, lots of corn, plantains (not bananas), crème of chicken soup and frozen pork sausage. While the PhilAbundance scene is enough to make those uppity Whole Foods Foodies hold their noses, if food prices in the future climb to the height of one of Burko’s glaciers, culinary snobbery will have to come to a screeching halt.



For this year’s Henri David Halloween Ball we dressed up as a long haired hippie journalist (circa 1971) in a jean jacket, buttons and sunglasses, and danced the night away with Roman soldiers, zombie cowboys, biker chic sluts, mermaids, female impersonators, vampire seductresses, nuns in neon habits, hobo werewolves, and people dressed as boxes of Franzia (Merlot) and macaroni and cheese. Afterwards we headed home but took the wrong El shuttle bus so that we wound up at the Frankford Terminal, where more than one person assumed we were dealing drugs. When we made it home for real (and removed the wig), we vowed, “Never again,” although days later Henri called, asking “How’d you like it?” Of course, we said “fantastic,” leaving out the terminal part, as Henri went on to inform us that for his post Ball respite he was taking his partner Paul to a B-52s concert and then later to meet former Philly Welcomat writer, Kiki Olson, now a London resident. “Kiki’s on her fifth husband,” Henri said, “and she’s as buoyant and slim and as full of life as ever!” We expected as much, despite false rumors to the contrary that had Kiki crashing the weight scales. Though we don’t know if Kiki went out for Halloween, Henri did remind us that his annual ball was helped to get its start from Rittenhouse Square society ladies who told him initially that the idea reminded them of their own Masked Balls. He also confided that when he was invited to their fancy cocktail parties he met the likes of Fernanda Wanamaker and Hope Montgomery Scott (who lost vision in one eye when she “missed” while uncorking a champagne bottle).


It’s always been true that one definition of cool is a love for surrealist art. One of our must-do jaunts last month, aside from taking in one of The Choral Arts Society’s memorable Bach at Seven concerts at St. Mark’s church at 17th and Locust Street (where we met Artistic Director Matt Glandorf) was a visit to the Museum of Art’s The Surrealists; Work from the Collection, on display until March 2014. Here we saw familiar pieces from the museum’s holdings of Dali and Miro masterworks, a much larger display than we had anticipated. An even greater surprise was a Thomas Chimes panel portrait of poet Guillaume Apollinaire, looking as fine as it did in 2007 during PMA’s Thomas Chimes Adventures in Pataphysics exhibition, when Anne D’Harnoncourt announced, “Tom is a magician.” The exhibit reminded us that the leader of the Surrealists, Andre Breton, had a vehement dislike for one group of people. Like poet Ezra Pound’s hatred of the Jews, it may be hard to conceive of a hatred of homosexuals in so revolutionary an art environment; but in Paris, on January 27, 1928 the Surrealists under Breton met in Paris for the first session of the “Researches sur la Sexualite” where Breton exclaimed, “I accuse homosexuals of confronting human tolerance with a mental and moral deficiency which tends to turn itself into a system and to paralyze every enterprise I respect.” Salvador Dali mustache wax indeed!

From PMA, we headed to Green Street where we noticed busloads of French tourists pouring out of school buses. The well coiffed, fashionably dressed crowd seemed to be husbands and wives, all chatting amiably while being escorted by cassocked Catholic clergy into the Chapel of the Convent of Divine Love. A tall monk from Belgium (in a blue habit) informed us that the event was the beginning service of a 3-day event to celebrate a new reliquary of Therese de Lisieux (the Little Flower), universally beloved by people of all faiths. The new reliquary, designed by French sculptor, Fleur Nabert, consists of 3 bronze cylinders, an artificial rose and two lilies in a transparent case shaped like a house. A cross sporting Dali-like sun rays dominates the background. Upon discovering the reliquary, our first impulse was to contact Timothy Rub or Norman Keyes and tell them that the boundaries of the PMA exhibit had mysteriously expanded.

We ended the month swinging from the rafters listening to sultry Peggy King at an All-Star Jazz Quartet held upstairs at Square on Square, 1905 Chestnut Street. We’d been searching for real jazz for a long time, not the squiggly incomprehensible anarchy sounds that sometimes passes for jazz. The self contained piano playing style of Andy Kahn, with Bruce Klauber on drums, had us believing we were in a Manhattan film noir setting. The music made us think of a lot of things, including another delight that week: PAFA’s Bacchanal celebration, where we chatted with Heike Hass (who good humouredly chided City Beat for last month’s take on KAWS (“Did you bring your paddle tonight?” she asked, before going on to describe how she wound up on the Colbert Show). Wonders never cease, as we also discovered at an Institute for Classical Art and Architecture (ICCA) talk at the Franklin Inn Club, where we learned all about Philly architect Thomas Ustick Walter, chief assistant to the architect of City Hall and the Fourth Architect of the Capitol. The talk was anything but a suffocating convention of scholar squirrels, for Walter was as real a person as any artist: He fathered ten children and often spent periods of time without employment besides going from house to house because he couldn’t pay his bills.

CLUELESS PARENTS WHO BRING THEIR BABIES TO ADULT PARTIES

Thanksgiving dinners almost always inspire conversation, so when the subject at the table this year turned to life in America, every cranberry-filled guest had an opinion. My host for the evening was an event planner for a major company in Center City Philadelphia. Rita's dinners (and parties) are legendary, partially because she's involved with setting up receptions for hundreds of people.

A subject that I brought up for discussion before dessert had to do with the current fashion of couples bringing their young babies to adult functions like dinners and cocktail parties. While I love a cute smiling baby as much as anyone else, I don't think that infants in swaddling clothes belong next to corporate buffet tables filled with sushi and gourmet cheeses. For starters, some of the babies I've seen at these functions look like they were just born. Infants are small, fragile, vulnerable human beings who need to be watched and protected. They need to be protected not only from germs but from raucous adult partygoer who may, on occasion, have too much to drink besides not looking where they are walking. Adult cocktail holiday parties can also be quite loud, which is hardly a soothing audio backdrop for small babies.

While attending a large architectural firm's Center City party recently, I noticed a small child being taken out of a stroller and placed on the floor of the reception room while party goers circled the stroller with drinks, plates of crab, blue cheese and slices of roast pig. Not only was the stroller blocking much needed room in that small space, but the daddy of the baby insisted on giving his child walking lessons in the middle of the floor, making it necessary for guests to take wide angled detours around them in order to avoid a collision.

Daddy was all smiles and not the least embarrassed about this very public display, but in fact seemed to take delight in the fact that this was his opportunity to shine and show off his child. He'd even look up at the people taking wide angled detours around the stroller to see if anyone was looking at him in an admiring way. He reminded me of a fisherman waiting for a bite only in this case he was fishing for compliments. While a few party goers did stop and say, "Oh, what a cute little baby!" most looked the other way and ignored the show, almost as if they were thinking, "Couldn't you have gotten a babysitter?"

It wasn't all that long ago when sensible-minded couples would no sooner take their infant or child to an adult party than they'd arrive at parties naked. The operative word then was babysitter. Couples who couldn't afford babysitters just didn't go out on the town. But somehow over time the social rules changed. Babies have become something like a possession to show off, like a tweed coat from Neiman Marcus, or a diamond from Tiffany's.

At another Center City reception -- again this was a party in which adults mingled while consuming food and alcohol -- I noticed a toddler running around and scampering under serving tables while helping himself to various bits of food (with his fingers). Since no parent was in sight, I assumed he was a lost child, or perhaps a ghost from that "I see dead people" movie, but that was not the case. Eventually I spotted his adoring mother watching him grab fistfuls of this and that while squeezing in between adult legs like a rabid shopper on Black Friday. At one point his mother patted him on the head, then steered him in the direction of the dessert table where he proceeded to decimate a plate of chocolate chip cookies.

One has to wonder if the mother in question imagined the party goers thinking, "Oh my -- look at that beautiful wild child, he's such a curious little devil!"

Again, we have to ask: whatever happened to the concept of a babysitter?

In many ways, the current fashion of bringing babies to inappropriate adult events has its counterpart in the pet world.

I'm thinking of pet owners who bring their oversized dogs with them when they go out to dinner at one of the city's outdoor restaurants. Some of these lounging dogs take up half the sidewalk while snacking from small bowls placed under the tables of their human owners.

The bring-your-pet-to-dinner craze started, I believe, when notable Hollywood starlets, mainly blonde bomb shells, started bringing their poodles to fancy French restaurants. Pictures of these stars and their pink poodles filled the covers of movie magazines.

The world of pet ownership has changed drastically in the last 20 years. I got a sense of this when I recently watched Sunday Bloody Sunday, an old film by John Schlesinger (starring Murray Head and Glenda Jackson), that I first saw in the 70s. The London-based story, which is about a three-way love affair, shows the death of the family dog when the dog is hit by a car while running across the street. The reaction of the characters at the death stunned me. They frown, look a little distraught, but within seconds they recompose themselves and talk about "getting another one," as if they were talking about replacement ping pong balls. In today's more pet emphatic environment, there would be considerable grief at the death, possibly even a far flung reaction that would have the mourning equal to that of a dead child.

As a toddler, I remember the supreme delight I'd experience crawling under the dining room table at home during massive Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. It was in that strange under-table world (with the family dog as my companion), where I'd inspect the variety of adult shoes, especially the strange footwear of venerable old aunts in thick stockings. It was as secure a place as any to hide. It felt safe, even if the unconventional views of trouser cuffs and the hems of dresses meant that I'd receive a parental order to come out of there immediately.

Enough is enough, after all. A wild child may be cute, but only in a very limited way.