In a moment, I knew what I was going to do on Sunday night, tonight. The City Paper advertised, for this cold, cold night, a lecture For the Curious, at Johnny Brenda’s, featuring R. Bradley Maule, or B Love, of Phillyskyline.com fame, and two of his cohorts. I took the el, unfortunately, and there was this big fire in the area, apparently, and I ended up on a “charter” shuttle, which didn’t stop at the other el stops, and I found out too late, pulling the string somewhere north of Girard, where I needn’t have been by myself. So, I jogged through about 6 scary, dark blocks to Girard, called my friend for exact directions, suffered a dead cellphone, passed the many firetrucks and emergency vehicles, and made it into the warmth and welcoming arms of Johnny Brenda’s for my Reading Premium.

If you haven’t experienced B Love’s site, and you love Philly, you must see it. I’m not sure if he makes a living from it, but I hope he does. He is a transplant to Philly, as many of us are, but sees himself as a Philadelphian. I feel likewise. I think he and his partners, Nathaniel Popkin and Steve Ives, have set themselves up to be a source of change, or maybe a driving force. I think they aren’t aware of the inspiration they are providing. Their lecture turned into a bit of a public forum for changes that need to be made. Look out for near-future changes in the blog, including comment capability and other technical innovations I know nothing about, as well as a real volunteer initiative. I hope this pans out. I would like to join up! I want to help, and you should too. I left there inspired, hopeful, and dreamy.

Just when I’m starting to think about my own feelings of safety in this city, local blogger Phillybits leaps into the fray in order to help a stranger who was the victim of theft. We need more people like this in Philly, folks who do what they can to help.

It was at this moment that I realized what I was witnessing was a brazen daylight robbery. I didn’t know what this man had stolen but from where I was, it looked like perhaps a piece of electronic equipment. With my backpack strapped to my back, and my bike left unlocked outside the coffee shop, I just took off after this guy. Didn’t think twice about it and just started huffing it as fast as I could after this guy.

Go read the rest of his story, it will give you hope for the future.

Last Thursday evening I took a friend to the airport and on the way back go totally mired in the traffic that was people heading to the Linc for the Eagles preview game. It was just one small reminder of how football crazy folks in this town can get. Local designer John Bilotta, Jr., in honor of this weekend’s season opener, has put up a Wallpaper Wednesday dedicated to the E-A-G-L-E-S.

Just about every Wednesday, Johnny puts up a new design that you can download at will and use as your computer desktop. Add his blog to your reader and go browse his archives. There’s some really neat stuff there, and the accompanying stories of how the designs came to be are frequently just as interesting as the images.

The doors are open and the music is turned up. Ed Tettemer, Philadelphia ad man and this evening’s official host is working the crowd, ready for his cue. The potential storytellers are signing up, all nervously hoping that their name will be drawn out of the hat and they’ll get a chance to take the stage and tell their story tonight. The highest-scoring participant tonight will win the Golden Ticket, which gives them entry to November’s Grand Slam, where storytellers will battle it out to determine who is the Best Storyteller in Philadelphia. The Grand Slam will be held during the First Person Fest in November.

The rest of the updates will be posted after the jump, so extend the entry and keep refreshing in order to read the highs and lows from the tonight’s Trespassing-themed story slam.
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Check it out! According to Outside.In (via Blinq) Philadelphia is apparently the second most bloggy city in the country. This finding, coupled with all the fantastic community that has been building around blogs, technology and social media confirms for me once again that Philly is most definitely the place to be!

Lots of cool things have been happening around Philly in the last week. For me, the coolest thing was that I was on the news on Wednesday night, talking about my Reading Terminal Market project.

Randy Schmidt launched icanhazcheezfries.com, a website that went from concept to reality in just about 14 hours.

Philadelphia’s own coworking movement, Independents Hall, seems to have found a home. Strawberry Street, here we come!

The last episode of season one of Cheap Dates hits the interwebs. Mark and Audrey head for Manayunk and have fun without spending too much cash.

Junto gets together at Punk Ave for drinks, pizza and a terrific brainstorming session, in an attempt to capture and continue the energy that started at BlogPhiladelphia.

Philly Bits, a blog that lives up to its name and posts about all things Philadelphia, put up a good photo post yesterday, documenting a bike ride out to 69th Street Station and back. I’ve only ever covered that ground in a car or on the El, so I thought was interesting to get a peek of things from bike level. Philly Bits is also the blogger who brought my attention to the Anti-Violence Bike Ride I posted about yesterday, so if you poke around on his site, you’ll see that I stole the scan of the poster about that event from him.

Today and tomorrow, I’ll be sitting in a ballroom at The Raddison-Plaza Warwick Hotel at 17th and Locust with a bunch of other bloggers/writers/social media folks for the first ever BlogPhiladelphia Unconference. I suck at live blogging, I just can’t take in and filter information that fast, but a slew of other folks are actively reporting the minute-by-minute happenings. Check out some of these folks for coverage of the days.

Phillyist/Philadelphia Will Do/Colin Devroe

If you happen to be at BlogPhiladelphia and are live blogging, let me know and I’ll add you to the list.

Photographer, runner, beer aficionado, father and occasional attendee at the Philly blogger meetups, Mark, was wandering in the historic district when he came upon a banner for the National Constitution Center. With a little careful angling and the help of a Septa sign, he was able to change the meaning of the banner to something a little more Philly-like.

Ah, the things you can do with camera angles.

I have a new favorite Philly blog that I’ve been meaning to post about for a couple of weeks now, but it has continued to slip my mind when I actually sit down to blog. But no more, I say. You must know and enjoy this blog as I have come to. So, may I present to you…Septa Watch!

That’s right, one enterprising soul has devoted much time and many words to document our messy, slow-moving, under-funded public transportation agency. The first post on the blog responds to the question many of you might be asking yourself, which is why would someone invest so much time in this?

I want to love you and encourage my friends to ride you, but you drive me crazy. Why does the rain cause you to give up and practically come to a grinding stop? Why must your buses stop at every. Darn. Block. The entire way into the City instead of, say, every other block? Why did you stop selling regional rail tickets from machines but still charge us $2 for buying a ticket on board? Why don’t you ever have any schedules in the schedule holders on the bus? Why do you stop the Market Frankfort El shortly after midnight? (Would another two hours kill you?) Why after every rider has complained about this–do most of the ticket booth attendants still not sell tokens or even give you change?

To read answers to some of these questions (or just more questions about why Septa continues to be so mediocre) you must check out this blog.