The “storming of the Bastille” at Eastern State Penitentiary has become such a staple of mid-July Philadelphia, complete with “Let them eat Tastykake!”, but were you aware that this is a full four-day French extravaganza?

The Fairmount French Fling Weekend begins on Thursday, July 10, with a bar crawl starting at 7pm with Belgian Café, then moving on to other local drinkeries like Bishop’s Collar, London Grill, Rembrandt’s, St. Stephen’s Green, and Urban Saloon.

On Friday, Fairmount restaurants host food and wine tastings and dinner specials. Starting at 7:30pm, Ratatouille, Pepe Le Pew cartoons, and Paris Je T’aime screen outdoors on the lawn behind Eastern State.

Saturday brings the entire Bastille Day Street Festival, including tours at Eastern State, crafts and treats for kids, vendor tents and French foods, and live music. The storming of the Bastille begins in front of Eastern State at 5:30pm, followed by twilight tours of ESP and after-parties at participating Fairmount restaurants.

But then there’s still more food on Sunday! London Grill, Rembrandt’s, Trio, Belgian Café, and Urban Saloon offer French Champagne Brunch, featuring brunch specials with crêpes, beignets and other French delicacies.

Full information can be found on Eastern State’s website.

Sonic, that drive-in wonderland with slushy drinks, big burgers, toasted sandwiches and tater tots, has teased us long enough.

You see, their cheery commercials filled with things that made my tummy cry out in hunger have shown on local stations for so long, but after gloomily reading on their website that the closest location was near Ephrata (before the Morgantown location opened), I gave up. We all did. Should we really drive over 40 miles for a cherry limeade?

No, my friend. Food and Drinq has kindly informed us hungry Philadelphians that Sonic is coming closer to home.

True, there isn’t a proper Philadelphia location opening soon. The new location in Royersford opens today, and stores are set to open in Bensalem and Levittown. Definitely closer than 40 miles.

And more delicious.

It’s too hot to think. I’m wearing a shirt that’s extremely light and fine; I don’t care if anything peeks through.

This past weekend I spent my Sunday at Target, having an iced coffee at the cafe while reading a book, trying on new summer shorts and dresses, walking around the aisles checking out everything I could… anything to stay inside that sweet, sweet air-conditioned sweetness.

What are some of your free or low-cost ways to stay cool and healthy while still getting out of the house? The main branch of the Free Library at 19th and Vine has always been a summer favorite of mine—I could spend all day roaming the stacks—but alas, I am working full time now.

At least my office building is also air-conditioned.

This Saturday, June 14, is World-Wide Knit in Public Day! WWKIP day started to bring other knitters together and to show the world that knitters of every type are everywhere.

This a specific day to get out of your house and go to a local event (with your knitting in tow) just for you and people like you. Who knows you might even bump into your neighbor! Consider this a spark, to ignite a fire; getting all of the closeted knitters out into fresh air.

There are a few Pennsylvania events listed, but only one in Philadelphia that I know of: My knitting group, the Third Street Ravelers, is hosting a KIP event at Rittenhouse Square beginning around 11 A.M. More information is available on the WWKIP event page.

Do all you knitters and crocheters out in Philly-land know about Ravelry? This site combines the best resource of patterns and yarns with all the fun of social networking. Tag your projects, tag your yarns, tag your forum posts.

While Ravelry is still technically in beta, the wait list for sign-ups is short, so withing a couple weeks you’ll be just as addicted as the rest of us.

You can join the Metblogs group or one of the many other Philadelphia based groups.

This week marks the opening of a new arts and wellness community center in West Philly called Studio 34, so named for its convenient location on the Rt 34 trolley.

According to their website:

Studio 34 serves as a hub, both online and onsite, for healing, art and wellness information. We want people to be well—period. We collaborate with other healing and arts organizations, including practitioners of eastern and western medicine, to host workshops in several healing arts, music and creative arts events, support groups, and community meetings.

To celebrate, many yoga and pilates classes this week (March 22-29) are free! The grand opening party is Saturday, March 29 from 7-11 p.m. with live music from the Citywide Specials and Walt Bibinger with Jessi Teich.

Saturday 8 March 2008

Sightings, Weyes Bluhd, Electroputas, West Philadelphia Orchestra, Mincemeat or Tenspeed at Circle Of Hope, $8 / all-ages, 8PM

Samara Lubelski and Soft People at First Unitarian Church (Chapel Show), $10 / all-ages, 7:30PM

Sunday 9 March 2008

Ghastly City Sleep and Pygmy Lush at The Barbary, $8 / all-ages, 6:30PM

Full show schedule and venue locations at r5productions.com.

The LA Metblog has a great idea that we are totally stealing, because it’s just that awesome:

A drop-down drag-out no-holds-barred fight to the finish to come up with the defining thing that is the worst in Philadelphia.

We’ll start with the top 64 things that we hate about the city, and in tournament style, narrow it down until we come up with number one. The comments are open to anything and everything you want to propose, from the smell at the 11th Street El station to the South Street onramp to the Schuylkill Expressway. The metblog authors will weed through the entries and come up the 64 best worst things to include in the tourney.

So what is it, Philadelphia? What do you hate about the city?

(Please remember that with the new Metblogs you need to register to post comments!)

Hello readers! Welcome welcome welcome. The new system launched sitewide this weekend and we are pleased as punch at the switch.

With this new system, users must register and login to post comments to posts. You don’t need to use your real name, but you do need to have a valid email address.

If you notice anything weird or out of place, post a comment to this post! We realize some posts may need some cleanup, some pages and posts throw errors, and some other things are being worked on my the awesome crew at metblog HQ, but anything you notice? Pass it along!