Inside the Ryland, the Fourth Society Hill Tower

Viewed from Foglietta Plaza, the Ryland stands apart from yet complements rather than upstages its three more famous neighbors. / Photograph by Sandy Smith; all other photos and *renderings courtesy of LCOR

The Society Hill urban renewal plan of the 1960s won national acclaim for its surgical approach to renovating a faded neighborhood. Instead of bulldozing it wholesale, the project tore down only the most seriously deteriorated properties while leaving the others standing.

The only place it did completely bulldoze was the city’s old wholesale food market along Dock Street. Its businesses got moved to a new Food Distribution Center in South Philadelphia in the late 1950s (since moved to Southwest Philadelphia). The buildings they occupied were razed and replaced with, among other things, the Society Hill Towers in 1964.

One of several projects that put an architect named Ieoh Ming Pei on the map, the three apartment towers stood as a modernist exclamation point in the still-mostly-colonial neighborhood. (Two more would join them a few blocks to the west in the early 1980s in the form of Independence Place.)

Fast-forward 55 years to 2019. That year, the LCOR development firm announced plans to build one more high-rise residential tower on land next to the Sheraton Society Hill (now the Philadelphia Marriott Old City) Hotel. And their planned 31-story apartment tower got the neighbors mighty upset. Many, like architect and Society Hill Towers resident James Timberlake, objected that the building would block their views — objections which caused project supporters to label them as NIMBYs — but Timberlake also objected to how the building would wreck the original plan for the Towers site.

“This tower violates not only the principles of that planning effort, but changes dramatically the understanding and appreciation of that planning effort,” he told a Zoning Board of Adjustment meeting in February 2019. The ZBA rejected the neighbors’ petition to rescind the tower’s by-right zoning permit then, and those neighbors fared no better in the courts in the two years that followed. LCOR broke ground on the tower at One Dock Street in the summer of 2021, and the Ryland welcomed its first residents in August 2023.

Inside the Ryland

Now, some five years after that first skirmish, I can’t figure out why the neighbors fought so hard against this tower. (Well, actually, I can. But the reasons I can come up with wouldn’t cast them in a favorable light.) Designed by BLTa, the 32-story tower complements rather than upstages the iconic Pei towers even though its massing and cladding are completely different.

Once inside, The Ryland also shows how people’s expectations have changed since the Towers rose. Apartment-building lobbies haven’t changed all that much over the six decades since the Towers were completed, but where the Towers lobbies have a minimalist aesthetic, the Ryland’s is a cross between mid-century and postmodernism.

The building lobby, whose chandelier is as sculptural as it is functional

Visitors and residents pass under one of the most original lighting fixtures I’ve seen once they leave the vestibule. Selected by interior designer DAS Architects, the fixture struck me as an homage to Tinkertoys, or maybe something a plumber might have produced when called upon to build a chandelier. Regardless what inspired it, it imparts an element of fun and whimsy to the space.

One of the lounges next to the elevators

Two lounges, including this one with a wood sculpture hanging from its wall, sits across from the elevator bank.

The walls of the elevator bank are unusually thick — 30 inches thick. ”Our elevator shaft is part of the structural assembly of the building. It gives us lateral resistance,” says Nick Pasquenza, senior vice president for development and construction at LCOR.

Amenities

The fitness center on the second floor

From here, the amenities get more lavish than they were in the ’60s, starting with the two lower amenity floors that the Ryland calls “The One Club.” The lower level, one floor up from the lobby, contains the fitness center, with weights, cardio equipment and a yoga studio. It also has a dog wash and a playroom for the kids. (This family-friendly amenity is of recent origin in Philly apartment buildings.)

The co-working center on the third floor

The upper level contains the main spaces for socializing, recreation and working — the latter being something people did elsewhere in the 1960s.

The media lounge

Located at treetop level, the third floor includes a media lounge,

The game room has billiard and shuffleboard tables and another big-screen TV

a game room,

The demonstration kitchen

a demonstration kitchen with a gas cooktop, a bar with a wine fridge,

The residents’ lounge

a sports simulator and a large L-shaped lounge with a piano and balcony on the side facing the Towers and 38th Parallel Place in addition to the co-working facility.

The Ryland roof deck, view towards the Delaware River

The roof deck pool

The roof deck, view towards pool and skyline, at sunset

And on top of these two amenity floors and the rest of the building is the 31st-floor sky deck.

The river view lounge

Dining room in the skyline view lounge, which also has a full kitchen

In addition to the pool, the sky deck floor has two indoor lounges, one facing the river and the other facing the skyline.

Things have come a long way from the community room, then.

Model unit at the Ryland

A model unit with a view to the northeast

The apartments have likewise evolved. Where residents of the Society Hill Towers — now a condominium — were satisfied with a common laundry room of the kind found in many older luxury apartment houses here, apartments at the Ryland, like those in just about every other new apartment building or condo built since the 1980s, have in-unit washers and dryers. (The building also has larger commercial-size washers for items too big to fit into the in-unit ones.)

The view to the east from the model corner unit

They also have floor-to-ceiling windows with fabulous views, but then again, this doesn’t distinguish the Ryland from its three predecessors.

The apartment kitchens have smooth-top electric ranges

What does distinguish it are the penthouse units on the five floors below the sky deck. These have their own private balconies where tenants can enjoy the fresh air and views without having to share them with their neighbors.

All of the Ryland’s 267 apartments have technology designed to make residents’ life easier. Tenants can use virtual fobs on their smartphones to unlock the doors to their apartments and access the amenity spaces. They can also adjust their thermostats using a smartphone app.

They also come with open kitchens whose appliances have QR codes; residents scan the codes to read their user’s manuals.

A model unit bedroom

The bedrooms also have unusually large walk-in closets with California Closets organizers. The bedrooms have blackout blinds while the other rooms have light-filtering ones.

The northeast apartments offer views of Penn’s Landing and the Ben Franklin Bridge. All of the tenants with windows facing east will also enjoy front-row seating for the July 4th fireworks displays. (The other tenants will have to make their way to the One Club media lounge or the sky deck.)

Living room in the model penthouse apartment

Dining room in the model penthouse apartment

Residents of the penthouses on the top five floors, however, might prefer to take in the views and the shows from their own private balconies.

Kitchen in the model penthouse apartment

The penthouse units boast a higher level of finishes and fixtures than the apartments below.

A penthouse apartment bedroom

And, of course, they have much more interior space, including three bedrooms.

LCOR chose the name for this building after doing some historical research. “The name actually comes from the rye fields” that grew the grain that went into rye whiskey, says LCOR Vice President Lo Romero. Pennsylvania was one of the first states that produced rye whiskey, arguably the first truly American spirit, in the late 18th century.

But LCOR didn’t stop there: The Ryland even has its own cocktail. The company worked with the mixologists at Art in the Age to create a specialty drink just for the building. I presume it’s served at community events in the One Club.

And I’ll bet the management also served it to their Society Hill Towers neighbors on the several occasions they invited those neighbors over to have a look around.

The Ryland by the Numbers

Address: One Dock Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106

Number of units: 267 studio, one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments and penthouses. Studio apartments range in size from 478 to 485 square feet; one-bedrooms, from 537 to 731 square feet; two-bedrooms, from 1,008 to 1,517 square feet. The three-bedroom penthouses all have 1,851 square feet of interior space.

Number of parking spaces: 74, in an underground garage accessed through the Marriott hotel next door

Number of bike parking spaces: 181

Pet policy: Pets are welcome, up to two per unit. Breed restrictions apply. Contact leasing office for additional details.

Rent ranges: Studios, $1,950 to $2,240 per month; one-bedrooms, $2,390 to $3,699 per month; two-bedrooms, $4,585 to $5,610 per month; two-bedroom penthouses, $6,990 to $9,540 per month. One three-bedroom penthouses remains available for $12,000 per month.

For more information: The Ryland leasing office; The Ryland website; 267-489-2142

Philly Police Pull a Strange Move After Rittenhouse Lululemon Theft

The Lululemon store on Walnut Street in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood of Philadelphia. Police responded to a theft at the Lululemon store last week. (Google Maps)

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Philly Police Pull a Strange Move After Rittenhouse Lululemon Theft

Because I sometimes write about crime in Philadelphia, I’m on the police department’s email list for media alerts. Public affairs officers use this list quite a bit to send out missing-person notices. Its other major function is to let the media know when assistance is needed to identify and locate suspects in crimes — typically major crimes or crimes that became more noteworthy thanks to news outlets and social media (read: Meatball) — and when arrests are made in major or prominent crimes.

So that’s why I was a little confused on Monday. That’s when the Philadelphia police department sent out a media alert about arrests in a theft at the Rittenhouse Lululemon. Police explained that last Thursday, an officer responded to a theft at the Walnut Street Lululemon store. According to police, the responding officer witnessed a woman putting clothes into the trunk of a car. Then she got in on the passenger side. The cop intervened. The woman ran off but was quickly apprehended, as was the man behind the wheel.

In the alert, police shared the names and ages of the arrestees. They shared the block in Port Richmond that one lives on. And, of course, police provided two mugshots of the desperate-looking suspects, because what’s a good crime story without desperate-looking suspects?

Surely, I thought, there must have been guns or other weapons involved during this Lululemon theft, right? Nope. Okay, but when the cop made the arrest, they found a bunch of fentanyl and guns in the car, right? Nope. Fine, but we’re talking about a ton of Lululemon merchandise here, right? This had to be a felony-level theft. Again, no.

Police say the value of the merchandise in question was about $1,000. That’s half the amount necessary to make a felony charge of grand larceny. And let’s be honest — if you’ve ever shopped at Lululemon, you know that $1,000 doesn’t buy you a very large quantity of stuff at the bougie store. This is a place that sells water bottles for about $50.

In the end, police charged the woman with three misdemeanors: theft, criminal conspiracy, and evading arrest on foot. The man is charged with theft and criminal conspiracy.

So why am I telling you this? I’m telling you this because it raises a couple of important issues.

First, many media outlets, sociologists, and scholars have realized the impact that crime coverage can have on society. It’s important to pick and choose what crime stories you’re going to cover and know why you’re covering them. And it’s equally important to consider how you cover those stories. Does every crime need to be written about? Certainly not. Many media outlets have also changed their policies for sharing mugshots of people who are merely arrested and not convicted of a crime, especially when the charges are relatively minor and non-violent. But some TV news stations still salivate when they see mugshots, and sure enough, Fox “All Crime, All the Time” 29 couldn’t wait to get its hands on the mugshots in question and tell the world about the alleged masterminds of this $1,000 theft.

But then there’s also this. In Philadelphia, there were 18,200 instances of retail theft in 2023 — a 28 percent increase over retail thefts in 2022. And 2024 isn’t exactly off to a good start. While almost every other category of crime is down in 2024, retail theft is still surging, with a 32 percent increase so far over this time last year.

So why on earth would the Philadelphia police department feel the need to alert the public of an arrest in a non-violent retail theft case when there are so, so many other retail-theft cases open? Sharing photos of suspects can serve a purpose, because it can help you catch a criminal. But what’s the point of sharing mugshots in a crime no one even knew had happened, and doing so four days after the incident? Is all of this because we’re talking about Lululemon in Rittenhouse Square and not some random corner shop outside of Center City? Or does this signal a new approach from the Philadelphia police department — to identify and publicly shame every person who is charged with stealing from a store?

I asked the Philadelphia police department to shed some light on what’s going on here. So far, they haven’t done so.

Remember Amy Gutmann?

The former Penn prez says she’s leaving her post as U.S. ambassador to Germany after just over two years.

Former University of Pennsylvania president Amy Gutmann in her official United States Department of State photo

In an internal memo, Gutmann told colleagues she was saying auf Wiedersehen so that she could be in the same country as her husband, Michael Doyle, a professor at Columbia. Doyle still owns a fancy-schmancy condo in Fitler Square, about a 10-minute walk from the edge of Penn’s campus. And Penn is still looking for a president after the whole Congressional debacle last fall. Plus, Gutmann is planning to come back stateside before the start of the 2024-’25 academic year. Just saying, Penn might want to look her up.

Abortion Is a “Money Laundering Operation” for Democrats

So says conservative Philly radio host Dawn Stensland-Mendte (yes, the wife of Larry Mendte, who I’m pretty sure is the only Philly TV news anchor to ever plead guilty to federal criminal charges that he hacked into his colleague’s email). And U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick seems to agree with her. If you’re into polls, incumbent Bob Casey currently holds just a wee lead over McCormick.

Local Talent

I’m always up to see the latest video from Childish Gambino (the rapper alter-ego of actor Donald Glover), ever since his video for his 2018 song “This Is America.” That video, and I don’t think I’m hyperbolizing here, is one of the best and most powerful music videos that’s ever existed and that will ever exist. So when I heard that Childish Gambino had a new video out, I naturally had to click. And to my surprise, the video for his new song, “Little Foot Big Foot,” features a cameo by none other than Philly’s own Quinta Brunson, of Abbott Elementary fame. Check out the full video here.

Speaking of Childish Gambino, he’s playing the Wells Fargo Center on August 21st. And who is his special guest? None other than Willow. As in Willow Smith, the only daughter of that guy from Overbrook High School. Tickets go on sale to the general public this Friday.

By the Numbers

37 percent: According to police stats, decrease in Philadelphia homicides so far this year, compared to the same time period last year. Armed robberies are down by about the same amount.

$50 million: Gift just given to CHOP for its upcoming 17-story research facility along the Schuylkill River. The cash comes from Temple alum Mitchell Morgan, founder of Morgan Properties in King of Prussia, and his wife and family. (The fam was on our Most Influential list last year.) Speaking of Temple and gifts, Temple alum Joyce Kean, a former Philly judge, and her husband just gave Temple Law $5 million.

0: Interest I have in Philly’s just-announced Fourth of July concert on the Parkway with Kesha and Ne-Yo. And judging by the social media reactions I’ve seen to this morning’s announcement, I’m not the only one who’s not exactly excited by this lineup. “Nobody have Jill Scott’s number?” wrote one commenter.

And From the New-York-Minute Sports Desk …

In last night’s opening game of the Phils’ road trip to the Mets, Bryson Stott singled and Edmundo Sosa doubled to lead off the second inning, and a Garrett Stubbs two-out single scored Stott. But the Mets evened it up in their half on back-to-back doubles, then went ahead 2-1 on a walk and a single off Cristopher Sánchez. Starling Marte led off the Mets’ third with yet another double, followed by a walk and a mound visit that resulted in a single, another walk, and one more run. Meantime, we were getting nothing more against lefty Sean Manaea. Sánchez didn’t help himself with an error that put a batter on in the sixth, and Seranthony Domínguez finished the frame.

With Manaea replaced by Jorge López, the Phils got within one in the seventh on singles from Sosa and Brandon Marsh and a Johan Rojas ground-out. A walk and a single in the seventh brought in Gregory Soto for Seranthony, and a Bohm error allowed a run. José Ruiz put the Mets down one-two-three in the eighth, bringing up the Phils’ last chance.

Stott kindly led off the ninth with a homer off Edwin Díaz, Kody Clemens got a pinch-hit single, and Phils fans in the crowd were on their feet. Marsh walked on four straight balls, bringing up another pinch-hitter: Kyle Schwarber, coming off his injured back. He … struck out. Stubbs at bat, and he popped up the first pitch. Whit Merrifield, who was 0-for-4, came to the plate and walked, just barely, as the ump ruled he didn’t swing at ball four. Up came Bohm, bases loaded, and he was hit by a pitch, tying the game. Holy shit. Bases still loaded, Bryce at the plate, and he … struck out.

Phillies/Mets games are always wild.#RingTheBell

— Derek (@JukeboxHero717) May 14, 2024

Could Orion Kerkering hold the tie? A line-out, a ground-out, and three straight strikes. Extra innings again! Harper started at second and took third on a passed ball with Castellanos at bat. Casty walked — no, wait, review of the count, yep, it was a walk.

The Mets and Phillies umps just spent 2 minutes going to New York to review and confirm a pitch count. How do 4 umps all lose track of the count?!

— Let’s Talk Sports (@LTSports80) May 14, 2024

That brought up Stott, whose long fly scored Harper, but Clemens struck out, and Casty got caught trying to steal, bringing the Mets up again. On came José Alvarado, for three straight quick outs and the 5-4 win.

I liked it more when the Phillies won games by 7

— Mark Magowan (@_magowan) May 14, 2024

They’ll take more swings this afternoon, starting at 1:10. How incon-VEEE-nient.

All Philly Today sports coverage is provided by Sandy Hingston.

Meet the Philly Home Baker Competing on The Great American Baking Show

Victoria Walters is a Philadelphia-based home baker competing in season two of The Great American Baking Show. / Photograph courtesy of The Great American Baking Show

Howdy, buckaroos! And welcome back to the Foobooz food news round-up. It’s kind of a weird week this week. There’s no huge news, but there are a lot of little things happening all over town — everything from tea at Aqimero and coffee in Brewerytown to a couple cool collaboration dinners and the history of Swedish Fish. So let’s get you up to speed on all the Philly food news that matters. And we’ll start this week with …

Philly Shows Up For The New Season of The Great American Baking Show

Born and raised in Harrisburg but educated and currently living in Philadelphia, local amateur baker Victoria Walters is in the tent for the new season of The Great American Baking Show on the Roku Channel.

Full disclosure: I have watched pretty much every episode of The Great British Baking Show that’s available (legally) in the United States. It is second on my list of “Favorite Obsessively-British TV Shows to Leave On While I’m Trying to Fall Asleep,” right behind The Repair Shop, which, if you haven’t watched it, is like high-dose Valium applied directly to the eyeballs.

But GBBS is almost as good, and making fun of it is so easy because British home bakers always have weird day jobs like assistant municipal flagpole counter or mink polisher and are incapable of baking anything that doesn’t have chocolate, orange, or passionfruit in it. And usually all three at the same time.

The Great American Baking Show, on the other hand, is like its British counterpart. The judges are stern British baking experts Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith. Unlike the British version, The Great American Baking Show won’t have Noel Fielding as one of its hosts. It has Zach Cherry (the angry dude with the glasses from Severance) and Casey Wilson (from SNL and that show Happy Endings that was on like a hundred years ago), and while I like both of them, neither has the weird louche vampire energy of Fielding. But whatever. Maybe they’re great.

The second season premieres on Friday, May 24th, with Philly’s own Victoria Walters among the contestants. She’s a Temple grad with an Italian mother and a Panamanian father, both of whom influence her baking. According to the bio that the show sent to me, Walters is also an amateur photographer, a knitter, a maker of terrariums, and a member of a local a cappella group, but baking is really her thing.

She did all the baking for her own wedding (10 cakes, including a four-tier wedding cake) and says that her style is “traditional American classic bakes” — something which, hilariously, Hollywood and Leith always seem confused by on the original Baking Show. Like, they will be entirely unfazed by someone making a dirt pie with raisins and live hornets in it, but if someone uses peanut butter in a bake, they will just stand there, staring blankly, like two dogs trying to do long division.

Anyway, Walters will be up against seven other amateur bakers from all over the country, trying to outlast them all and make it to the finals of the six-episode series. Here’s hoping she comes out of the gate swinging and does Philly (and Harrisburg) proud. You can watch the trailer for the new season right here.

Now what else is going on this week…

A “Boozy Tea Experience” at Aqimero

Aqimero tablescape / Photograph by Richard Sandoval Hospitality

Know why this one caught my eye? Because I can’t even remember the last time I wrote anything about Aqimero — Richard Sandoval’s Latin-inspired fusion restaurant in the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton Philadelphia. This is the place that took over when the Eric Ripert/Jennifer Carroll spot, 10 Arts, gave up its real estate at the Ritz. I slaughtered it in a review shortly after, declared the place entirely forgettable, then promptly forgot all about it myself. That was eight years ago.

And now, here we are.

Aqimero is gearing up for summer with a whole boozy tea experience that they’re describing as “a modern twist on traditional teatime, where classic tea is transformed into artfully crafted cocktails.”

Sounds nice, right? And what it comes down to is one large-format (meaning teapot-sized), tea-inspired cocktail, followed by a tasting menu and a bunch of desserts. The cocktails include coconut-infused rum with coconut water, lime and agave (which sounds pretty good, provided you really like coconut); a hibiscus Paloma Punch with hibiscus-flavored mezcal; and a jasmine tea margarita with tequila, lime, and edible flowers. The tasting menu is a lightweight spring/summer spread with tuna ceviche in lychee-citrus broth, shrimp empanadas, guacamole with grilled peaches, and then homemade macarons, churros, truffles, and sorbets for dessert.

Tickets for this particular tea party will run you $125 a head, and they’re only for certain dates: from noon to 2 p.m. on May 18th and 19th, June 15th and 16th, July 20th and 21st, August 24th and 25th, and September 21st and 22nd. Also, reservations are required, so get yours right here if you’re down.

Aqimero is also rolling out an updated menu for the season, leaning into wagyu tenderloins, Italian burrata and heirloom tomato salads with grilled watermelon, and roasted lamb shank with green salsa cruda. So if you’ve got guests coming into the city over the summer, check the place out. And if you like it, be sure to let me know. I’m really wondering if the place might be worth revisiting after all these years.

And Speaking of Tea …

The Bee Sting cocktail at Red Owl Tavern. / Photograph by Katie Reporto

I know that some of you out there are big fans of Bridgerton — the lush regency romance about to roll into the first half of its third season on Netflix, with the first four episodes dropping on May 16th. Unlike the Bake Off, this is not really my thing, but that’s cool. I’m sure there are more than a few of you out there already laying out your corsets and croquet mallets for the big day.

But do you know where there are some other big fans of the show? At Red Owl Tavern, apparently, where they don’t want to specifically say that they’re doing a Bridgerton-inspired “Spill the Tea” cocktail menu in celebration of the premiere … but they’re totally doing a Bridgerton-inspired “Spill the Tea” cocktail menu in celebration of the premiere.

Running from May 16th through June 30th, there are new, Bridgerton-inspired cocktails to keep you amused. Drinks like the Bee Sting with its Kinsey four-year bourbon, lemon verbena honey syrup, lemon juice and Canton ginger. Or the Duel at Dawn, featuring chai tea, Diplomatico Mantuano dark rum, Mr. Black and espresso. Or the Pink Lady, which is mint-tea-infused Bombay Sapphire, Lillet Rouge, pomegranate and lemon juice, which sounds incredible.

According to the Red Owl, each cocktail will be accompanied by a pre-written “Gossip Card, sure to stir up scandalous conversations at the table.” I have no idea exactly what that means, but the bar crew at the Red Owl are really getting into it. So go! Check it out! Maybe meet some other Bridgerton fans, get loose on gin and dark rum, and maybe challenge someone to a duel. It’s summer in Philly. Anything is possible.

Now, how about some leftovers?

The Leftovers

The chefs of Lacroix’s upcoming “Sous-Chef” collaboration dinner with Laurel happening on Sunday, May 26th. / Photographs by Mike Prince

At Lacroix, executive chef Eric Leveillee is turning things over to the sous-chefs for a night, letting his own team (Jeff Davidson and Mike Heck) and the sous-chefs from Laurel (Maximilian Lukens, Duane Lê, and Sam Feinberg) design and prepare the entire menu for a one-night-only collaboration dinner.

Honestly, I love this idea. The multi-course, fully collaborative dinner is happening on Sunday, May 26th. There’ll be two seatings (5:30 and 7:30). Tickets are $110 per person, and reservations are live right now. So five years from now, if you want to be able to say that you knew these chefs (and had them cook for you) before they made it big, you know what to do.

Brewerytown has a new place to start the day. Last week, Rival Bros. Coffee opened a new cafe at 3145 West Jefferson Street, on the ground floor of the Poth Brewery Lofts. They’re doing a coffee bar menu with their fresh-roasted beans, breakfast sandwiches, toasts, and pastries from Mighty Bread Co. In the future, they’re going to be adding more lunch-y fare — made-to-order sandwiches, salads, stuff like that — but for now, they’re just getting their legs under them, so they’re keeping things easy. Hours are 7 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekends.

You guys know how I never miss an update from the American Swedish Historical Museum, right? Well, if you ever wondered where Swedish Fish come from, that is the place to go and find the answer because they’ve currently got a pop-up exhibit on Swedish candy and confections featuring, among other things, the history of Marabou chocolate, why Swedes like salted licorice, and the origins of Swedish Fish.

Sound cool? Then you can go and see it all for yourself from now until September 15th. Admission is included with a general admission ticket to the museum, and I hear that the gift shop is well stocked with Swedish candies. Everything you need to know about the ASHM can be found right here.

The Spruce Street Harbor Park is getting ready to reopen for the season. From what I hear, the whole place has been completely revamped since last year. There’s a new corner store called “The Trading Post” that will be stocked with pints of ice cream from some of Philly’s best ice cream makers, local snacks, and merch from Philly makers and artists. The Lazy Hammock is a new public space featuring a covered bar and performance space, including a 16-foot video wall for watch parties and movie nights. The new food and beverage menus are still being finalized, but everything should be in place for the big opening on May 24th — just in time for Memorial Day weekend.

Good news for all you xiao long bao freaks out there in the suburbs. Nan Xiang Soup Dumplings (a.k.a. Nan Xiang Xiao Long Bao) is opening up a new shop at the King of Prussia Mall. And they’re doing it soon.

The grand opening is tomorrow, May 15th, and this new location will have — in addition to its legitimately famous crab and pork soup dumplings — a full bar, a covered patio for outdoor seating, and what looks like a killer menu. I mean, Shanghai-style dim sum, pan-fried pork buns, char siu, and soup dumplings all in the same place? Yes, please.

Until Wednesday, the closest place to get Nan Xiang soup dumplings was in Cherry Hill. But this new KOP location appears to just be the start because the mini-chain is already planning for multiple new locations in the region opening throughout 2024.

Jezabel’s is kicking out the jams next week with a special live-fire Fuego Dinner on the rooftop bar at the Bok on Tuesday, May 21st. For $250 a ticket, Jezabel Careaga and her team are putting together a full-on, multi-course, family-style meal inspired by the cuisine of the Andes Mountains, paired with party juice from Porvenir Wines, and culminating with a show-stopping seven-day flan for dessert.

Reservations are required. Get yours here.

Living in Lansdowne: A Neighborhood Guide

Lansdowne Theater / Photography by Matt Stanley

Living history

The Lenape were the first inhabitants of what’s now Lansdowne; Europeans began to join them when William Penn opened up his colony to settlement after 1682. What became Lansdowne was a farming village until the arrival of the Philadelphia and West Chester Railroad in the 1850s made it easier for middle-class city dwellers to escape the growing metropolis and settle here instead. One reminder of the borough’s rural roots remains: the Dickenson Farmstead (12 Owen Avenue). Built in 1732, today it’s surrounded by homes constructed between the 1880s and the 1920s. Its neighborhood, Lansdowne Park, is one of two National Register historic districts in the town of some 11,000 residents.

Deep roots

The community’s oldest resident, so to speak, is the giant sycamore at Wycombe and Lacrosse avenues. The tree has called this place home since around 1640 and has been Lansdowne’s official symbol­ since the Bicentennial.

Shopping and dining under the trees

Scrappy Cat Shop

As might befit a ’burb whose symbol is a sycamore, the main street, Lansdowne Avenue, has a healthy canopy of leaves for shade. Beneath them are such local spots as Scrappy Cat, “a curiosity shop” at 16 North Lansdowne Avenue, and Kia’s Cakes (16 South Lansdowne Avenue), a cozy cafe specializing in pastries and baked goods. And downtown offers plenty of dining options, including international fusion restaurant Sophusion (24 North Lansdowne­ Avenue).

Treats from Kia’s Cakes in Lansdowne

Curtain call

You’ll also find the Lansdowne Theater (31 North Lansdowne Avenue), a movie palace designed in 1927 by architect William Harold Lee, who had a hand in many iconic Philly-area theaters. An electrical fire in 1987 shuttered the movie house, but dogged efforts by local residents to restore it are finally paying off: The theater is expected to reopen as a concert venue later this year.

Victorian splendor for reasonable prices

Lansdowne’s convenient location — SEPTA Regional Rail gets you to Center City in 15 minutes — has made it a popular draw. Compass agent Sunny Pierce describes it as “a community of people looking to live a simple yet good existence in a town where they can feel safe.” And whether­ your choice is one of the Queen Annes and Victorians in the Lansdowne Park Historic District,­ one of the mid-20th-century colonials in Gladstone Manor, a modest­ rowhouse, or a downtown condo, you can find it here at an affordable price. “It’s one of the very few places that you can get a three-bedroom, one-and-a-half-bath home with a shared driveway and a small garage for under $300K,” says Pierce. Prices­ top out around $600,000, and Pierce adds that the local market isn’t prone to wild swings.

Published as “Living in Lansdowne” in the May 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

Is This the Death of the Carnival?

An abandoned carnival ride (Getty Images)

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Is This the Death of the Carnival?

I’m pretty sure that ever since the first carnivals came into being, they were places for a bit of mischief and misbehavior. You cram a bunch of rowdy and hormonal tweens, teens and young adults into one place, and not all of them are going to be sweet little darling angels. But in recent years, carnivals have had to cope with more serious incidents.

In just the past week, we’ve seen three major unhappy developments in the world of local carnivals.

First came an announcement from the Broomall Fire Company that it would no longer host the Delco carnival it’s been organizing for decades, citing attendee behavior as a major factor.

“In recent years, we have taken significant steps to mitigate these issues, including earlier closing times, the installation of fencing around the carnival grounds, and bolstering security measures with additional police presence,” the fire company said in a statement. “Regrettably, despite these efforts, complaints regarding attendee behavior concerningly persist,” the department said in a statement to local residents.

Marple Township police chief Brandon Graeff chalked a lot of the problem up to a lack of parenting. “We see kids just starting to be dropped off of all ages,” Graeff told 6 ABC. “And it’s free babysitting for three to four hours. That’s become a problem.”

That was last Thursday. Then came Saturday.

Out in Chester County, police revoked the permit for the carnival at the Exton Square Mall. That came after a group of teens violently attacked someone once the carnival had closed for the night. Police have released surveillance footage of the assault and are asking for the public’s help to identify those involved.

And down in Wilmington, things turned deadly at a carnival outside the Concord Mall. Somebody opened fire during a fight, wounding one teen and killing another. As of Monday morning, the carnival was still scheduled to continue through May 19th. Ironically, the carnival is sponsored by an anti-violence organization.

Last year, a popular annual carnival in South Philadelphia banned unaccompanied minors after police responded to a group of disorderly teens there that reportedly numbered in the hundreds.

I think this is where I’m supposed to say: This is why we can’t have nice things.

PPA Crackdown on ADA Violations

In case you hadn’t noticed, people have decided they can park anywhere they want. They park on sidewalks. They park on crosswalks. Cars regularly block curb ramps. All of this is bad news for people with disabilities, since this illegal parking can sometimes make it impossible for them to navigate the streets. But the PPA recently hired a bunch of new enforcement officers whose focus will be ticketing cars that do this. I think this is one of the few times when most of us will side with the PPA. The ramped-up enforcement began today.

Donald Trump In Wildwood

A quick recap of the Donald Trump rally in Wildwood on Saturday: Trump falsely claimed that protesters have been “rioting” at Penn. He also suggested that his administration would deport any foreign students displaying “anti-Americanism” at campus protests. And he somehow connected migrants to Hannibal Lecter. And the size of the crowd at the Trump rally is a matter of much dispute. So, yeah, just another day on the Trump campaign trail.

By the Numbers

60 percent: Decrease in spending that Mayor Parker has proposed for this year compared to last year on Vision Zero projects. Former mayor Jim Kenney created Vision Zero in 2016 with a mission of making streets safer for bicyclists, drivers and pedestrians and a long-term goal of zero traffic-related fatalities. In other words, it’s why all those speed bumps have popped up in your neighborhood over the past few years. IMHO, we need fewer of these aggressive speed bumps and more (lots more) protected bike lanes.

$0: Funding in Mayor Parker’s budget proposal for the 70 affordable housing units the city agreed to build in University City as part of a lawsuit settlement last year. So, less money for bike lanes, no money for an affordable housing project. Pretty much the opposite of what you’d be getting had we elected Helen Gym.

2: Games played by the Philadelphia Soul before the team “paused” (pretty sure they mean canceled) the rest of its season. Gotta be honest: I had no idea the Philadelphia Soul still existed. (It’s arena football.)

And From the Quick-Nick Sports Desk …

Red-hot Ranger Suárez was on the mound for the Phils on Friday night in Miami, and the team was back to its early-scoring ways, with two in the second inning on a Nick Castellanos solo homer, an Edmundo Sosa double and a Johan Rojas single. They added to that in the fourth when Whit Merrifield reached on an error, Sosa walked, Cristian Pache doubled and Kyle Schwarber singled, to give Ranger a 5-0 lead.

That was it for Marlins starter Trevor Rogers, but the Phils tacked another on his replacement, Declan Cronin, in the fifth: Whitfield walk, Pache single, Rojas on with a fielder’s choice, and a fielding error that made it 6-0. Rojas added a solo homer in the seventh. And Ranger? He went seven scoreless innings, allowing three hits and striking out nine.

What Ranger Suarez is doing this season is unbelievable.

Rain or shine, he has been razor sharp in each of his first eight starts with spotless command.

— Alex Carr (@AlexCarrMLB) May 11, 2024

In the eighth, J.T. Realmuto singled, and Bryce Harper doubled him home: Hey, everybody gets a hit! Gregory Soto came in to pitch the bottom half and gave up two runs on a double, a walk, a double and another walk, but it could have been worse. And José Alvarado took the ninth and was unscathed. Another great outing, with an 8-2 final.

It took our guys a while to get started in Saturday’s early-evening game; they actually put nothing on the board through the fifth inning and went down 1-0 in the bottom half on Vidal Bruján’s solo homer off Taijuan Walker. We tied it up in the sixth, though, on a Merrifield double and a J.T. single, then went up 4-1 after Bohm singled, Castellanos walked, and Bryson Stott tripled. Walker finished with six solid innings.

The Phils had another four-run inning in the eighth, after Castellanos was hit by a pitch and Stott, Sosa, Pache and Rojas all singled in quick succession. There was a Marlins flurry in the final inning off reliever José Ruiz, including a two-run Otto Lopez homer, but he finished them off after that for an 8-3 final.

Most Phillies wins through 40 games…

1976- 29
2024- 28
1993- 28
. . .
2008- 22
1980- 22 pic.twitter.com/wT1FkGNd0s

— John Foley (@2008Philz) May 11, 2024

And Sunday? Another early start, with Castellanos’s first-inning homer that scored Bohm, who’d doubled, and Bryce Harper, who’d walked.

CRUSHED by Casty!!#RingTheBell pic.twitter.com/V22igP9Cjj

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) May 12, 2024

The Marlins got one back in the second when Zack Wheeler dished up a walk, a wild pitch, and a ground-rule double. He followed that up with two outs and another walk, then a big K to end the inning. Another ground-rule double to start the Marlins’ third, then a walk and a three-run Josh Bell homer put the Fish up 4-3. And two more in the fourth on a hit batter, a single and a triple? Maybe it was time to pull Wheeler … so it was Orion Kerkering for the fifth, and three quick outs.

Hey, and we picked up two runs in the sixth on a Harper single, a Stott walk and an Edmundo Sosa triple, then tied it with a Marsh sac fly! That’s right where it stayed into extra innings, until in the bottom of the 10th, Gregory Soto intentionally walked Josh Bell, pinch-hitter Emmanuel Rivera singled a run home, and the Marlins walked it off, 7-6. Booooo! The Phils start another away series, this one vs. the Mets, tonight at 7:10.

Any Doop News?

In Chester on Saturday night, it only took Mikael Uhre 12 minutes to score on Orlando City, but Orlando got it right back 10 minutes later against Oliver Semmle, in for the injured Andre Blake. And they notched another in the 41st minute — Luis Muriel’s first-ever MLS goal. And another by him just 20 seconds into the second half — yikes. Andre, for God’s sake, get better soon. Quinn Sullivan scored one in the 53rd, but it was called back for offsides, much to the home crowd’s derision.

A handball call on Orlando in the 62nd gave Dániel Gazdag a PK after a review and got us back within one, but Damion Lowe got a red card for a trip on an Orlando break just outside the box to put us down a man — but then that call was reversed. He did get a yellow a few minutes later, though. And then, in the 85th minute, a miracle occurred: a PK called for us, fury on the part of Orlando, another chance for Gazdag — but the Orlando goalie blocked it, and Gazdag kicked his follow-up a mile above the post. Fifteen minutes of stoppage — really?

A final Union corner, a near-miss, and that was it — their third straight home loss. Sheesh. No tweets for you. Console yourselves, fans, by reading up on what the Wall Street Journal had to say about Cavan Sullivan last Friday.

All Philly Today sports desk coverage is provided by Sandy Hingston.

Inside the Epic Search for Philly’s Next Tuba Master

Curtis Institute of Music has only one tuba student. What does it take to make it? / Illustration by Pete Ryan

A young man sits alone in a room, a tuba on his lap, and blows it hard, huffing and puffing to play Snedecor’s Low Étude for Tuba Number 4. It’s a head-rattling piece in a profoundly low register — its lowest note is pedal C, which would be the fourth key from the left on a piano, and it requires Superman lungs and strategic breath control to nail. I’m watching a video with Craig Knox and Paul Krzywicki, the tuba instructors at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. They’re telling me what they’re hearing in this audition reel, submitted by a candidate who hopes to become the elite school’s next tuba student.

“He’s taking a lot more breaths, and yet he’s still running out of air at the end of the phrases,” Knox observes. “There’s a fluffy attack at the beginning of notes, where we would like to hear a nice clean front.”

“He’s not having as much fun as the other boy had,” Krzywicki says more bluntly, comparing this to a previous video. “There’s a certain degree of terror in his face, isn’t there?”

This month, Curtis’s sole tuba student, Ethan Marmolejos, will graduate, which has given rise to a global search. Curtis enrolls a total of around 160 students but just one tuba student at a time, because a symphony orchestra only has one tuba. In its century of existence — Curtis this year celebrates its 100th anniversary as one of Philadelphia’s truly world-class institutions — the school has admitted a total of 37 tuba students, making this one of the rarest study opportunities in the world. Mathematically, Penn State admits more students per day, though, granted, they don’t all play tuba.

Even other exclusive performing-arts schools don’t have just one tuba; Juilliard carries three or four. But entrée to Curtis is prized; tuition is free, covered by an endowment, and learning here is often the ticket to an illustrious career in symphony orchestras. About 45 percent of the musicians in the Philadelphia Orchestra and 18 percent of those in the New York Philharmonic attended Curtis. The Curtis tuba student who preceded Marmolejos, Cristina Cutts Dougherty, became principal tubist for the Phoenix Symphony at age 25, replacing David Pack, who’d held the seat for 48 years.

“There’s no school in the world that has had such success as Curtis employing people in the orchestral world. No place even close,” Krzywicki says. It’s why, when the chance arises, music students stop what they’re doing to try to get in.

Knox is a Curtis grad — the fourth to become principal tuba for the Pittsburgh Symphony. Krzywicki, who played in the Philadelphia Orchestra for 33 years, was his teacher. Now, they’re deciding who’s next. The school has very rarely opened auditions to outsiders before. But my weird fascination with tuba players seems to have disoriented them, and they agree to let me chronicle the process.

To me, playing tuba as a life choice is an exquisite act of hope — proof there’s still a place in this clickbait-influencer world for the under-loved specialist in a field with a barely existent job market. Tuba players are like unicorns (which literally means “one horn”) without the sparkle. In an orchestra, they pull a heavy load with no glamour, hidden in the back, like a subwoofer behind the couch.

If a wailing saxophone is the cry of the soul, the tuba has been likened to another human expression: Novelist Peter De Vries called the tuba “the most intestinal of instruments, the very lower bowel of music.” Mockery and comparison to gastric disturbance is the tubist’s fate. In the children’s book Tubby the Tuba, “fat little” Tubby dreams of playing a lovely melody, but the more delicate symphony instruments laugh in his face. He retreats shamefully to a pond, ugly-duckling-style, where a bullfrog teaches him a beautiful tune that he carries back to the orchestra, and the instruments love it so much that they all join in (hijacking his solo!). In The 40-Year-Old Virgin, to illustrate what a mega-nerd Steve Carell’s character is, he parades around his apartment playing a baritone horn, sometimes known as a tenor tuba.

I ask Knox what kind of oddball loner kid chooses to play tuba instead of being one of the 76 trombones in the big parade, or the dozens of violinists who flock around the conductor like angelic favorites. I suggest it’s like picking the road less traveled. He tells me he titled his tuba-performance album A Road Less Traveled.

“I think I was drawn to the fact that there’s just one of them,” he says. “It’s sort of your own realm. You’re in charge of taking care of business on that low end in the orchestra. You’re the end of the line down there.” When he played soccer in school, he recalls, “I was always the goalie.”

The tuba wasn’t invented until 1835, so Beethoven never wrote a note for it; Mozart never saw one. “Usually if you’re doing a Mozart symphony, the tuba just goes and has coffee,” says Jay Krush, a tuba artist in residence at Temple’s Boyer College of Music and Dance and the tubist for the Philadelphia Ballet. History’s first concerto for solo tuba, by Ralph Vaughan Williams, wasn’t written until 1954. Philip Catelinet, who played its debut for the London Symphony Orchestra, didn’t invite his own wife to the premiere because he assumed it would be ridiculed, confessing to a newspaper reporter, “I would rather suffer alone.”

I ask Knox for examples of tuba in popular music, and he earns his outsider stripes by not really coming up with anything. In movies, he does note, “It’s often sort of a quirky or villainous or threatening character. Curb Your Enthusiasm — what’s his name? There’s a tuba in his soundtrack.” Film composer John Williams is a tuba freak. He wrote his own tuba concerto, and the instrument is in his movies: the motif for Jabba the Hutt, the booming alien mother ship in Close Encounters. 

“It’s a foundational sound,” Knox explains. “I mean, you can have a couple of trumpets, French horns, some of these high-register instruments, and they can play a chord and sound really, really great. But then you put a tuba underneath that, with a firm bass resonance, and it just makes the sound 10 times fuller.”

What I discover is that when you start listening for tuba in a symphonic piece or brass quintet, you hear substance, gravitas, a pumping lifeblood and not mere intestinal disturbance. It feels more like a heart than a fart.

Let’s Get Ready to Rumble

Curtis announces the tubist opening on its website in the fall of 2023; Knox posts the info on Facebook, TubeNet, TubaForum, and other platforms where prodigies might be lurking. “We want to leave no stone unturned,” he tells me. With a December 15th deadline, applicants must submit videos of them playing five (for undergraduates) or seven (for graduate students) pieces Knox has selected to expose skills and weaknesses. Based on the video pre-screening, promising applicants will advance to stressful in-person auditions at Curtis — housed in a row of buildings off Rittenhouse Square that includes a mansion once inhabited by the school’s founder, Mary Louise Curtis Bok Zimbalist — in mid-February, after which one winner will be chosen. Thanks to the tough repertoire and considering past auditions, Knox expects only 30 or so video submissions from around the world. In November, he’s surprised to see his Facebook posts have been viewed 88,000 times.

In his time at Round Rock High, near Austin, Texas, Miles Bintz played in the concert band and the marching band, at football games and state competitions. Now 20, he’s a sophomore studying tuba at Texas Tech. While practicing to audition for the Nashville Symphony last fall, he saw Knox’s TubeNet post about the Curtis opening — and though he’s already in college, he decided to go for it. “That’s the place to be if you’re going to be a classical symphony-orchestra musician,” he says. He rents the college’s choir room, records his videos, and submits his application.

Christian Jeon, 19, learned about the Curtis opening early. He studies tuba at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, where his instructor is none other than Craig Knox. “Even before Craig’s Facebook posts, people were talking about, ‘Oh, yeah, there’s going to be an opening,’” he says. In 2022, Jeon decided to post a video of himself performing every day for a year. He thinks that helped him get good enough to win acceptance to the National Youth Orchestra after he’d been rejected on his first try. Last year, he played with the Youth Orchestra at Carnegie Hall.

Knox and Krzywicki could select a graduate student, a transfer, a true freshman, or someone even younger; high-school-age kids have been accepted to Curtis. They take high-school classes locally or online while studying there, then get a college degree at the institute, staying for five years or more. Regardless, there’s still just one tuba spot. “It’s a crapshoot between the young player with potential and the older player who’s more advanced,” Krzywicki says of the decision.

Raphael Zhu, from Princeton, started playing tuba in fifth grade, joined the Philadelphia-based Young Musicians Debut Orchestra in seventh grade, and entered Juilliard’s Music Advancement Program in eighth. Now he’s in ninth grade, 14 years old. “I was talking with some of my friends who are in college now, so they’re a lot older, and they were talking about how the student at Curtis is graduating. They’re like, ‘Maybe you should audition,’” he tells me. “I’ve always heard about all the really young violin prodigies that go to Curtis. But until last year, I never thought about it.”

Over the holiday break, the tuba professors count the applications. There are 43 — the most they ever remember getting, from 19 states, China, Israel and Canada. Knox calculates that selecting one out of 43 yields an acceptance rate lower than those of Harvard, MIT and Stanford.

Weirdly, all the applicants are male. I wonder if there’s lingering fallout from a sexual-abuse scandal involving a Curtis violin teacher in the 1980s — a disgrace the school hushed up until it finally broke as news in 2019. But about half of Curtis students now are female. I confer with Dougherty, and she says the lack of female applicants could be connected to the abuse revelations but adds, “The reality is that the road for women in our field is still more lonely and harsh than it is for men.” Instruments can become gendered as early as elementary school, and girls may be discouraged from even trying the big horn. Carol Jantsch, the Philadelphia Orchestra tubist who taught at Curtis, is a role model, but there aren’t many. A 2019 study of 40 top orchestras found tuba had the second-highest percentage of male players: 90 percent. (Timpani was 100 percent; harp was the most female.)

Still, Dougherty had a great experience studying with Knox and Krzywicki. “The effect they both had on my confidence and sense of self was remarkable,” she tells me. “If all the aspiring women in my field got to study with them, the world would be a better place.”

The instructors spend close to 20 hours apiece watching the student videos before comparing notes. They know what they’re listening for, like figure-skating judges waiting for daring leaps. “This, for me, is really just to screen out people who clearly aren’t ready,” Knox says, and cues up examples of great and not for me.

Watching Jeon play the Vaughan Williams concerto, Knox says, “The clarity of articulation is really important here. He hit every note right on the money. You’re gonna hear some other people who essentially fake a lot. They sort of poke at the notes.” Krzywicki is impressed by the video of Zhu: “I would have never guessed a 14-year-old kid would come in and play like that,” he says. 

The instructors narrow the field to 16, including Bintz, Jeon and Zhu, and invite the group to Philadelphia for winner-take-all Sweet 16 madness. Nothing will matter except their short performances in front of the judges — not reputation nor résumé. “That’s the real world, isn’t it?” Krzywicki explains. “When a job opening happens in an orchestra, you’re judged based upon what you do on the stage for those 10 or 15 minutes.” 

There Can Be Only One

The next challenge is getting to Philadelphia with the huge F tuba and even bigger C tuba required to play the audition pieces. Many tubists drive long distances to avoid flying with fragile, grossly oversize instruments. Bintz considers a 26-hour road trip from Lubbock but ends up making plane reservations. He checks one tuba in baggage and buys a seat for the big one.

Once you arrive, you can start worrying. “Curtis is a very scary place to enter when you know nothing about it,” Dougherty tells me. “It looks like a big mansion — all these chandeliers and pictures of old guys staring at you. I think in my first audition, that really freaked me out. I felt like there was no way I would be good enough.”

This year’s auditions don’t take place in Field Concert Hall, where Leopold Stokowski taught, but in a modern building that contains performance spaces, dorms and a cafeteria. Jeon has no idea what to expect; he says he imagined “like a huge orphanage-type thing.” Bintz envisioned a sprawling campus.

It’s still imposing. Gould Rehearsal Hall, the size of a small gymnasium, is an acoustically precise room with wainscoting tilted back three degrees to make every sound resonate. It’s set up with a lone chair and music stand for the tubist, facing a table where Knox and Krzywicki sit in judgment. Fear works against you. “Once you’re nervous, the tension doesn’t allow you to move your air without some restriction. And that’s bad news for the tuba,” Krzywicki says.

The 16 candidates arrive on a February morning. Each will play for 15 minutes. Selected finalists will audition again in the early evening. “It’s a gruesome day,” Krzywicki acknowledges. 

Bintz is first and grabs his big horn, nailing the Snedecor étude. On a lively Bach bourrée adapted for tuba, Knox requests “firmer intonation … a little more clarity at the front of the notes.” He does this frequently, asking players to change things up, testing their ability to adapt to instruction. “I felt like I was making some of the best sounds that I’ve made in a long time,” Bintz says afterward.

Jeon, up next, shines on the Vaughan Williams concerto. “I played close to my best, in my opinion,” he tells me. “There are some things that obviously could have gone better. But I was very happy.”

As the candidates play, one by one, a wet spot develops on the floor where they empty their spit valves. “It’s just nerves; they’re not playing that long,” Krzywicki tells me.

When it’s Zhu’s turn, the judges ask him to fill his lungs and play with more force, seeming to suggest he’s too small for his instrument. Krzywicki asks about his parents’ size, pondering future growth. “I felt like their biggest concern may have been that I couldn’t put up enough sound,” Zhu explains to me. 

Then the candidates wait nervously, crammed silently with their giant tuba cases in the front lobby. Tuba players are hard to excite. They’re like the placid Brad Pitt character in Ad Astra, whose heart rate never rises above 80. In the big room, Knox and Krzywicki give the names of four finalists to Shea Scruggs, Curtis’s chief of enrollment, and he walks downstairs for the announcement. Bintz is in. “I kind of jumped. I didn’t really expect it,” he says. Jeon is in. Zhu isn’t. Nobody smirks or cries. Bintz and Jeon shake hands. Others put their heads down and roll their tuba cases out onto Locust Street. The more auditions you go on, the more you learn not to take it personally, Shakespeare said. No, sorry, it was Paula Abdul.

“There were a handful of players who were shaky. I could tell they weren’t playing up to what they normally do,” Knox says.

The finals don’t start until almost 5 p.m. Curtis’s dean, Nick DiBerardino, and current tuba student Marmolejos join the judges’ table. Knox changes up the repertoire. There’s an excerpt from Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 that sounds like a sad “Frère Jacques” and includes a low note held for an inhuman 24 seconds. Jeon adds a little sauce on the end of this. “I wasn’t completely confident in my counting, so it’s better to be safe and hold it for longer than you have to,” he explains.

Knox asks the candidates what they hope to get out of Curtis. He hands them sheet music they’ve never seen before. At one point, Krzywicki pulls up a chair right next to Charley Pollard, a tubist from Miami, to observe his face while he plays. By 8 p.m., it’s over. The judges decide within an hour — they don’t even leave the room. But the decision won’t be disclosed for a couple of weeks. “I was just, every day, furiously checking my email,” Jeon says.

The decision message arrives in early March: The winner is … Jeon, Knox’s Carnegie Mellon student. “I screenshotted it,” the young player says. “Told my parents and friends, my high-school teacher. … ”

“The fact was that Christian just sort of blew away all the older kids,” Krzywicki says. Bintz, named first alternate, will stay at Texas Tech. “We’ll see where life takes me,” he says philosophically. Though Jeon is a transfer, he’s offered four full years at Curtis, so the judges might not do this again until 2028. They plan to keep their eyes on Zhu. “Paul and I agree he played better than many of the graduate applicants even though he was 14,” Knox says. “It’s hard to predict. But, you know, I hope maybe we hear him at the next audition.”

And so the world will have another Tubby, a musician hoping to sit without fanfare in the back of a major orchestra. The website Priceonomics did an analysis of the job market for tubists and calculated that “even if you were the best tubist in the world there’d be only a 10 percent chance you’d have a chance to apply to audition for a major symphony orchestra this year.” Dougherty tells me there are currently no scheduled auditions for full-time orchestral tuba jobs in America.

Marmolejos, who’s graduating this month, has been looking. “I’ve gotten some second places,” he says gamely, “have gotten in some final rounds. It’s a pretty tough world in terms of employment. There are probably 20 orchestras in the U.S. that pay above $50,000 a year. Sometimes, almost 200 people show up to these things, and they only choose one.” Unicorns aren’t easily deterred, though. “It’s been great,” he says.

Published as “The Battle of Big Horn” in the May 2024 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

Guy Raises $46,000 to Annoy University of Pennsylvania Protesters

University of Pennsylvania protesters, who were targeted by a GoFundMe campaign threatening to pay a mariachi band to play next to the protest 24 hours a day. (Getty Images)

While riot police have moved in on protests on other college campuses across the country, Penn is still trying to figure out what to do with its now two-week-old protest encampment. There, opponents of the war in Gaza hold up signs. And they use a megaphone to get their message out. Well, Penn might not know exactly how to solve this dilemma, though the school has stepped up its response a bit this week. But one person who says he’s a Penn student came up with an idea that’s certainly original.

A person by the name of Rob Martinez organized a crowdfunding campaign on the GoFundMe platform. His goal? Maybe to raise money to provide humanitarian relief to people in Gaza? Nah. Evacuate family members from Gaza, as this Philadelphia GoFundMe campaign is working to do? Nah. He said he wanted to hire a mariachi band to play next to the encampment all day and night.

Now, music has long been a part of protest movements, and, indeed, there have been drummers and other musicians participating in the University of Pennsylvania encampment. But Martinez wasn’t going to use the mariachi band to join the protest. He was going to use the mariachi band essentially to protest the protest.

On the GoFundMe campaign page, Martinez explained that “these protesters should be serenaded for their efforts, just as they have constantly serenaded my efforts to study for finals with a megaphone and drum set.” He said he would spend the money raised to hire a mariachi band to play continuously until all funds were depleted.

I’ve seen so many worthy GoFundMe campaigns not get the kind of support you’d think they would. The GoFundMe campaign to help cover funeral costs for a man killed in a hit-and-run in Kensington the other day has a goal of $10,000 but is only up to $3,136. A local woman trying to get help to pay for her dog’s critical surgery has only raised $225. Someone in Philly in a bad predicament needs $10,000 to save her home but so far has received just $325. But launch a GoFundMe to hire a mariachi band to play 24/7 next to a protest encampment, and you can raise $46,657.

A screenshot of the GoFundMe campaign to annoying the University of Pennsylvania protesters using a constantly-playing mariachi band

That’s right. Over the course of a week, Martinez raised $46,657 for his “cause.” That would probably cover about 120 hours of round-the-clock performance by a mariachi band.

Alas, there will be no mariachi band, which is a shame, since we kind of like mariachi music. (Though I guess 24/7 of any music could become burdensome.) After receiving unprecedented support, Martinez called the whole thing off. A GoFundMe spokesperson told me that the platform would refund all donors at Martinez’s request.

“As much as I tried to bring this event to fruition, I am only one student,” Martinez explained to me on Thursday afternoon. “It grew to a scale that I could not handle all by myself … Between getting permits, bands … And [figuring out] how to safely put this event on … It just became too much for me to handle in one week.”

Hopefully his finals are going okay.

Inside the Major Staffing Shakeup at WMMR

Former WMMR employee “Pancake” with WMMR DJ Pierre Robert (Photo courtesy BP Miller/Chorus Photography)

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“Pancake” and Other WMMR Workers Lose Their Jobs

Wednesday was a “terrible fucking day” at WMMR, Philadelphia’s long-running rock-and-roll radio station. That’s according to one source from Beasley Media Group, the huge Florida-based company that owns WMMR and several other stations in the Philadelphia market. The Beasley source confirmed what we had already heard: that at least three people working with WMMR had just lost their jobs.

One of those three people was the WMMR producer and on-air personality known as Pancake. His real name is Chris Ashcraft. Pancake got his start at WMMR in the late 2000s, when he was an intern for Pierre Robert. More recently, Pancake could be heard exchanging witty banter with Pierre Robert, in addition to calling in reports to the Preston & Steve Show about things like a beheading in Bucks County, where Pancake resides.

Two other people no longer working with WMMR include Greg Monaghan, a graphics specialist, and Todd DiFeo, who worked in the promotions department. Both Monaghan and DiFeo worked at WMMR as well as the other Beasley Media Group stations in the area.

One Beasley staffer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of losing their own job, called the layoffs “corporate bullshit.”

It’s been a busy week in the Beasley Media Group human resources department. Beasley also let go Jen Scordo and Pat Egan from 97.5 The Fanatic.

“We are realigning our core business operations to reflect the current economic conditions in order to best serve the needs of our valued audiences, advertisers, and shareholders into the future,” a Beasley representative said oh-so-corporately in a statement.

All of this comes less than two years after Beasley turned WMMR on its head by firing the popular DJ Jaxon. That’s when WMMR also eliminated all live overnight programming, opting for cheaper automated programming.

“We’ve been live and local 24/7 and used that for all the good it brings us for 54 years,” one WMMR source told us back then. “But corporate ownership simply doesn’t care. And that’s the real punch to the gut. They are completely profit-driven. And they don’t care about history or legacy. They don’t care about what the station and the people who work there mean to Philly and to the listeners. They care about one thing and one thing only: money.”

Back in 2022, we also learned that Beasley had even considered ending its long, long relationship with its most famous personality: Pierre Robert. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. And Pierre Robert secured a new deal with WMMR earlier this year, extending his contract for four years.

As for other WMMR talent, all on-air staff at the Preston & Steve show remains safe. For now.

Over In Kensington…

It took city workers just a few hours to completely dismantle the homeless encampment on Kensington Avenue on Wednesday. The one-block stretch of Kensington Avenue is now free of tents, sleeping bags, trash, and, most notably, people. It’s not exactly clear where all those people have gone. And activists are asking the city for transparency in the process. 6 ABC has this report on what happens next, though the city isn’t exactly providing a lot of answers.

Local Talent

It’s graduation season, so you know what that means: Famous and semi-famous people speaking at local college commencements. Former Temple University student and now Hollywood mega-talent Quinta Brunson came back to Temple on Wednesday to talk to the Class of 2025. She told them, “Kids at UPenn got nothing on you.” Well, other than much, much higher tuition. But I’ll leave the jokes to the comedians. Brunson’s full speech is here.

By the Numbers

$1,500: Minimum it will cost you to have Marc Vetri and Lidia Bastianich cook for you at the Friends of Marc dinner next week. Well, actually $3,000, because tickets have to be bought in pairs. Only 100 seats are available.

$40,000: Franchise fee you’ll have to pay if you want to open the next Philadelphia location of Tapster, the pour-your-own-drinks bar that opened in Center City last August. I dunno. A bar without a bartender just feels so wrong.

900: PECO customers targeted in an aggressive new scam. If somebody calls you telling you they’re on their way to shut off your electricity because your last payment didn’t go through, they are almost certainly lying. Should this happen to you, hang up the phone and call PECO directly. And if PECO tells you the call was bogus, call your local police department.

And From the Wait-We-Can-LOSE?!? Sports Desk …

The Phils didn’t get on the board first for a change in yesterday afternoon’s game against the Blue Jays at CBP, since the Jays got a run off starter Aaron Nola in the second on a pair of singles and a steal. The Phils got it right back in the third, though, as the Jays’ Chris Bassitt gave up walks to Bryson Stott and Edmundo Sosa, a Johan Rojas single, and a Kyle Schwarber sac fly. It was quiet after that until the sixth, when the Jays got two more on a brace of singles, a double and another single. That brought in Matt Strahm for Nola, and he promptly pitched a single: 4-1 Jays. Apparently there was some sort of Hulu problem, but that only affected folks who didn’t have to work in the middle of a Wednesday, and what kind of people are that?

hey @NBCSPhilly @hulu_support
how come i’m supposupposed to be able to watch the Phillies game but it’s all blackout!?!?!?
I watched it on HULU LIVE on the MLB CHANNEL up until the 6th inning then an error came up saying the game was BLACKOUT …. that was me watching the game pic.twitter.com/gZZxZu3tpc

— JLMc74 (@jennmc915) May 8, 2024

Seranthony Domínguez came on for the seventh and got it done, and in the bottom half, Brandon Marsh singled and Nick Castellanos doubled off the wall, which was the end of Bassitt. Zach Pop (high on the Great Baseball Name list) took his place with one out, and Stott pushed a run around with a sac fly before Kody Clemens, pinch-hitting for Sosa, struck out.

Orion Kerkering pitched the eighth and let another run across on a walk and two singles. A J.T. Realmuto double in the eighth went wasted; Alec Bohm led off the last-chance ninth with a single off Jordan Romano, Castellanos eked out a single, and damn if Stott didn’t double and make it 5-3. Two on, two outs, Whit Merrifield at the plate … and a pop-up for an out. Well, I guess we were due — overdue, really — for a loss.  End of game, end of winning streak — never change, Phillies fans.

Seasons over. Damnit

— Nate Graeff (@17_30NATE) May 8, 2024

They’re off until Friday, when they begin a road trip with a visit to the Marlins, 7:10 start.

All Philly Today sports coverage is provided by Sandy Hinsgton.

Meet the Baker Behind Philly’s Dreamiest Cakes

Ashley Huston of Dreamworld Bakes / Photograph by Mike Prince

You’ll know a Dreamworld Bakes cake when you see one. Exploding with color and festooned with flowers, fruit dipped in glitter, and maybe a mini disco ball or two, Ashley Huston’s cakes are celebrations unto themselves.

Huston has spent years developing her signature style, first baking birthday cakes for her family and friends before fielding requests from their family and friends. Then, in 2020, Huston turned what was then a casual side hustle into her micro-bakery, Dreamworld Bakes. By 2022, it had become a full-time operation.

Now, the baker fulfills custom orders and sells her cakes all over Philly at pop-up events and stockists like Riverwards Produce. And later this year, she plans to open her own space in Kensington at 2400 Coral Street, once home to Franny Lou’s Porch. Huston hopes to open sometime this summer and plans to operate as a cafe, bakery, and cake studio, offering savory and sweet breakfast and lunch items — and, of course, cake.

Here, Huston shares more about her plans for the brick-and-mortar Dreamworld Bakes, the importance of representation as a Black baker, and her love of edible glitter.

I was born in … Arizona, but my family was from here so I moved back when I was fairly young. I grew up in Philly for the most part — raised in different parts, mainly the Northeast and North Philly. I call myself a Philly girl for sure.

I learned how to cook from … my dad. He was like, “You’re gonna be self-sufficient and we both have to work,” but also food was an important way he connected with his mother, and he taught that to us. I wasn’t really encouraged to pursue food. It was like, “We cook food because we have food. Don’t get a job and do that — it’s not practical.”

Before I began my culinary career, I thought … I was going to be an artist but that was very impractical, too. I stopped [doing art], but now I see that baking is my art. That sounds cheesy, but that’s honestly the way I see it.

I went to school at … Temple.

I studied … finance because I was good at math and that seemed like what I should do. I was 18. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I didn’t want to do that.

When I graduated … I got into the Peace Corps and was a teacher for a few years in Tanzania. It was a great experience, but I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher either.

I did some hopping around after, and then I was like, “Okay, now you actually have to make a decision.” I was a little older, a little bit wiser, a little bit more independent, and able to speak with my own voice at that point. And I said to myself, “Just go, try to cook.” I came back and told everyone I was going to try to do this.

Dreamworld Bakes cakes / Photograph by Mike Prince

I got into baking because … I love sweets. I have a sweet tooth. My family also grew up with a lot of sweets in the house. Probably more than there should have been, so I always had that interest.

When I was in high school, I was always the one who wanted to make everyone’s birthday cake. I wouldn’t even say I was a cake person per se, but cake has always been what you use for celebration. So it was a great way for me to learn how to make things from scratch.

I started cooking in Philly as … a line cook at South Bowl then North Bowl and from there I found myself always going back to the sweet side. It’s more my speed. I wanted to learn more about coffee and working in a bakery or cafe, which was always my dream. So then I became a barista. I wanted to get a full map of the food industry. I was still making cakes on the side for people, and at that point it was just a hobby for friends and family. But from there, their friends and family would ask, “Can you make me a cake?”

Dreamworld Bakes began as … a little side hustle. Then, in 2020, I guess I had more time on my hands. So I was baking a lot more. That’s when I started Dreamworld as the brand. But even then I didn’t really pursue it until 2022. That’s when it became my full-time job because I was out of a job. I needed to make money. My relationship was ending. My dad had just passed. There were all these crossroads popping up in my life, and I asked myself, “What are you going to do?” And if there’s any time to try and see if this would have some legs, it would be now. That’s when I started doing more pop-ups and markets and using all my connections with people I know in the industry and being like, “Let me come sell cake.”

I have always looked at cakes as … an empty canvas to fill out. When I first thought about cakes this way, I thought, “Is this crazy? Am I putting all these crazy things on top of cakes?” And then I realized no, it’s not that crazy. People have always put plastic toys on kids’ birthday cakes.

One cake I’ve made that means a lot to me is … the Baby Spice. It was for my former neighbor, Emma, and my first-ever wedding cake. We did a few tastings, and I came up with this idea. It’s my most popular cake now. Everyone says, “I want that Baby Spice thing” — which essentially is a cardamom cake with passionfruit curd and mango chai mousse, and a tonka bean buttercream.

My vision for the cafe … is to expand what Dreamworld can offer. I want it to be a good place for the community — where people can come in and have breakfast or lunch and make good memories.

On the menu … we’ll have some sweet stuff, savory stuff, options to get you throughout the day, as well as cake. I want more people to be able to get Dreamworld on a regular basis. Eventually I want to do some Sunday brunch and some dinners as well — maybe not all the time, but a few here and there.

The vibe will be … very Ashley for sure.

Inside you’ll find … a green kitchen. I love green kitchens. I plan to have a really sick bathroom that you can do a lot with. I really like to liven up small spaces. Green tile, lime-washed walls. Dark walnut is up there in that color palette and then probably some sage green. I don’t want to do too much with it because I think my cakes do so much. I don’t want to clash with that. We’ll just wait and see what happens.

Ashley Huston outside of where she plans to open her brick-and-mortar. / Photograph by Mike Prince

Opening a start-up is … very tricky. I secured partial financing from the Business Accelerator Fund, an emerging CDFI (Community Development Financial Institution) based in Philadelphia, and still need more. Right now, everything I get in goes toward paying for overhead and tackling little things.

My advice to other business owners opening their own place … this is probably very cliché, but if you have a dream don’t give up, especially at the hardest parts. Nothing worth fighting for comes easy.

I feel like I’m very much in it now. I’m losing a lot of sleep and I’m crying all the time, but I feel like I’m so close. I think that’s when a lot of people choose to give up or have to for other circumstances. Hopefully, I don’t have to be one of those people.

My advice would be just to keep going. Keep trying. Get through the hurdles. Go through the different renditions of something. But also give yourself space, and probably get some sleep.

What excites me the most about having my own place is … realizing my dreams. Since I was a little girl, it has been my dream to have a place where people can come and enjoy my food.

I had a really hard life. I mean, I grew up in Philly. Philly is pretty rough. I grew up in the hood — the hood is even harder. It’s really hard, I think, for people to have the opportunity to chase their dreams and then be successful. So if I’m able to do that, it’s proof that you could get out and make something of yourself.

I want to be seen as … a Black woman known in the food and baking industries. There are definitely Black people and Black women in food, but I feel like society always boxes us into one group. Like, you have to cook one type of food. There’s an archetype of what a baker looks like and, no offense to anyone, but they’re white women. If you don’t fit that type, you’re not going to get something good. I want to show people that’s not true, especially other young Black women who are like, “I want to be a baker, but I don’t see anyone on the TV that looks like me.” That’s probably my biggest motivator.

Also, I really do enjoy feeding people. I love it when people say this cake was the best cake they’ve ever had. It makes me feel like I’m fulfilling my purpose here — like I was meant to cook.

My signature move is … throwing flowers and glitter on everything. When I found edible glitter, I said to myself, “Oh my god, this is dangerous. I’m going to put it on everything.”

See what goes into a Dreamworld cake in the video below and follow Foobooz on Instagram for more.

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Mayor Parker’s Kensington Crackdown Begins

A homeless encampment in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia in 2023, months before Mayor Cherelle Parker would send teams in to clear out the encampments (Getty Images)

Check phillymag.com each morning Monday through Thursday for the latest edition of Philly Today. And if you have a news tip for our hardworking Philly Mag reporters, please direct it here. You can also use that form to send us reader mail. We love reader mail!

Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker’s Kensington Crackdown Begins

Previous Philadelphia mayor Jim Kenney basically did nothing about Kensington, just as he basically did nothing about lots of other problems during the latter part of his tenure. But our new mayor, Cherelle Parker, is clearly determined to make changes and to address the Kensington issue. Police and other officials have been doing a little bit here and there over the last few months. But Wednesday morning brought about the biggest action we’ve seen yet.

We originally heard that the city would be clearing one of the main homeless encampments in Kensington — the one on Kensington Avenue from notorious McPherson Square up to Allegheny Avenue — beginning on Wednesday morning around 8:30 a.m. But it seems they took action sooner, since no one appeared to be living on the block as early as 7 a.m.

It’s a little unclear where all those people went, or where others the city forces to move will go. Officials in Montgomery County have expressed concern that the city might relocate people from Kensington to Montgomery County towns, the way that some southern states have taken those who have crossed into the country illegally and sent them to northern cities, including Philadelphia. “We don’t need an influx of outsiders,” Pottstown’s mayor told WHYY. It’s also unclear whether these concerns are based in reality or just some good old suburban paranoia.

What is clear is that somebody needs to do something about Kensington. But not everybody is convinced that Mayor Parker is taking the right approach. Some on social media have compared her law-and-orderness to the tenure of Frank Rizzo. And then there’s this incendiary (and let’s be honest, hyperbolic and unfair) poster that sprung up on the streets, declaring that Mayor Parker wants drug users dead.

The situation in Kensington is a developing one, and we’ll get you more when we have it.

By the Numbers

200+: Charges filed against Scott Grondin, 42, the alleged ringleader of a major gun- and drug-trafficking gang. I think that’s one charge per face tattoo.

8 feet: Height of a cowboy boot that has popped up on the sidewalk in the Italian Market, becoming a weird little tourist attraction. Fortunately, we have Stephanie Farr of the Inquirer to help us get to the bottom of this.

5: Speaking of the Inquirer, that’s the number of staff members just laid off by management. And it sounds like the union representing Inquirer employees is pretty fired up about it.

Local Talent

Big congrats are in order for Wynnewood resident Tyshawn Sorey, who just won the Pultizer Prize in Music for his composition “Adagio (For Wadada Leo Smith).” What? It’s not on your playlist? You can listen to it here.

Sorey, a father of two and Penn prof, has described the song as an “anti-concerto” for saxophone and orchestra. It’s very, very soft. And it’s very, very slow. As in 36 beats-per-minute slow. The folks who give out the Pulitzers praised the work as a “introspective saxophone concerto with a wide range of textures presented in a slow tempo, a beautiful homage that’s quietly intense, treasuring intimacy rather than spectacle.” If you’re wondering what makes this an anti-concerto, concertos are usually very much spectacles with lots of razzle-dazzle and pizazz. This is certainly not that. Check out this New York Times piece on Sorey for more.

Philly is doing alright in the Pulitzer department. You may remember that South Philly playwright James Ijames won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Drama for his play Fat Ham, which enjoyed a stint on Broadway last year followed by a sold-out run at the Wilma. (You can read my interview with Ijames here.) So what’s Ijames up to these days? The Public Theater in New York presents his play Good Bones this fall. And next year, he directs August Wilson’s King Hedley II at the Arden.

If you know of more talented Philly folk I should be writing about, send them my way.

Reader Mail

Speaking of local talent, I had some negative things to say on Tuesday about Kevin Hart’s fumbling of the host job at the Tom Brady roast, which you can watch on Netflix, should you want to waste three hours of your life. And as I often do when I voice my own opinion, I asked readers to weigh in with their thoughts. I’d say those thoughts came in at about 75 percent in favor of Hart being the funniest thing on earth and 25 percent siding with me.

This person, who humorously signed the email Kevin Hart and sent it from kevinhart@gmail.com, definitely wasn’t a fan of what I had to say:

Kevin Hart was fucking hilarious during the roast. Everyone I’ve spoken to about it agreed. He made it so much better by just being loose and having fun with it. Have you ever watched a roast? The man made Kraft and Belichick take a shot together. Do you have any inclination how funny that is in the professional football world? Assuming your sense of humor is the Office reruns or New Girl, I’ll guess not, d!ckhead.

I admit to enjoying Office reruns!

And From the Are-We-Having-Fun-Yet? Sports Desk …

Cristopher Sánchez was on the mound for the Phils in the opening round of their series with the Blue Jays last night, and though he allowed a lead-off single, he promptly racked up three straight outs. In the home team’s half of the first, José Berríos gave up a single to Bryce Harper and a double to Nick Castellanos that scored Harper, but Nick then got picked off second base for the third out. Sánchez had a one-two-three second inning before Bryson Stott singled and stole second and a Kody Clemens homer made it 3-0 Phils.

The fourth inning was interesting. With one out, Edmundo Sosa was hit by a pitch, Clemens tripled him in — guess he likes the big leagues! — Garrett Stubbs walked, Kyle Schwarber was also hit by a pitch, Whit Merrifield struck out, and — quick, who’s on first? — Bryce Harper did this.

BRYCE HARPER WITH HIS 3RD HOME RUN IN THREE GAMES AND THIS ONE IS A GRAND SLAM

THIS IS AGAINST THE MLB’S ERA LEADER COMING INTO TONIGHT

THIS PHILLIES TEAM IS ON A ANOTHER

HARPER IS BACK IN MV3 FORM

THEY ARE HOT! pic.twitter.com/2rx4ZFaKWr

— Philly Sports Sufferer (@mccrystal_alex) May 8, 2024

That made it 8-0 Phils, and they weren’t done yet, though the Jays did pick up a run in the seventh, before Spencer Turnbull came in for Sánchez for the final two frames.

Shocker another Phillies pitcher had a good outing pic.twitter.com/w4cIeYv0B0

— Talkin’ Baseball (@TalkinBaseball_) May 8, 2024

In the eighth, Stott singled, Sosa tripled to score Stott and then scored on a Clemens ground-out, and it was 10-1 Phils for the final — the team’s 11th straight home win, tying the CBP record.

The hottest club in @MLB is: pic.twitter.com/ro7Z7AJlFk

— Philadelphia Phillies (@Phillies) May 8, 2024

They’ll face off again this afternoon, with a 1:05 start.

All Philly Today sports coverage is provided by Sandy Hingston.