Virtual Classes
If being at home with your kids 24/7 has changed your attitude toward screen time, it’s okay. We know you love those little rascals, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need some “me” time now and then. Allay your guilt (if you still have any) by registering for one of the many local kids’ classes that have popped up on YouTube and across social media. Settlement Music School is offering Settlement Kids Live (settlementmusic.org), with free music and dance classes for children streamed live on Facebook every Tuesday and Thursday. If your offspring have energy to burn, InMovement Gymnastics Education (phillyinmovement.com) has online tumbling, karate and dance classes. Pick the one that’s right for your little one, and you may actually get the chance to use the bathroom without being interrupted. And the Philly Zoo at 2 (philadelphiazoo.org) introduces kids to all kinds of creatures every weekday at 2 p.m. via Facebook Live — and keeps an archive of past videos for hours of educational streaming.
Herman's
There’s something to be said about a tiny cafe and micro-roastery that can look a seething global pandemic right in the eye and not so much as flinch at the idea of going toe-to-toe with it. There’s even more to be said about the creativity it takes to completely transform, to wholly rebrand, to expand in ways nobody expects, at a time when fear and tragedy can be so debilitating. Herman’s did both. Owners Matt Falco and Amy Strauss were able to turn their converted-auto-repair-shop cafe into a pop-up hub for aspiring chefs and business owners in need of a home, a retail pop-up outlet for vintage brands and plant shops, and a boutique market with an enviable collection of imported pastas, tinned seafood, chocolates, and more food-things you never knew you ever wanted, let alone needed. When the pandemic forced so much of Philly to become less, Herman’s became more, for the neighborhood it’s in and for all of us who needed some inspiration, hope and delicious things in especially trying times. 1313 South 3rd Street, Philadelphia, PA 19147, hermanscoffee.com.
West Chester
Check into a cozy room at West Chesters hospitable new Hotel Warner (120 North High Street, 610-692-6920), where theres fresh popcorn in the lobby after 3 p.m. a well-buttered nod to the locations previous incarnation as a historic Art Deco movie theater. Spend the day lazing around bucolic Chester County; the Brandywine Battlefield is less than five miles away and provides the perfect place for a picnic. At night, enjoy one of the many restaurants within walking distance of your hotel, from oysters and seafood platters at Doc Magrogans (117 East Gay Street, 610-429-4046) to beers and bar and bistro food at the more casual Iron Hill (3 West Gay Street, 610-738-9600). Youll be glad your bed is just around the corner, though it might be hard to resist a pint of Chubby Hubby the hotels front desk offers Ben & Jerrys by the pint for $5. A nice touch. 00000, greaterwestchester.com/visit-w-c.
The Heroes of the I-95 Rebuild
When we got the news in June that a tragic tractor-trailer fire had taken out a portion of I-95, we all had the same collective thought, perhaps expressed best by city managing director Tumar Alexander: “I-95 will be impacted for a long time, for a long time.” But Josh Shapiro — doing his new-governor flex and demonstrating an undeniable knack for seizing a big moment — wasn’t having any of that. He promptly set in motion a flurry of emergency declarations and resource-marshaling we’ve not seen round here since the pope’s visit.
He was aided by a bit of kismet. There was the blink-and-you-missed-it demolition job by Deptford’s C. Abbonizio Contractors, who happened to be working nearby on a different I-95 project. Then we all became experts on foamed glass aggregate, thanks to Delco’s Aeroaggregates, providers of the miracle backfill material — made of recycled bottles! — that temporary lanes would be built upon. And there was the rebuild by South Philly-based Buckley & Company, which also had its equipment nearby, for work on the I-95/Betsy Ross Bridge interchange. Serendipity! PennDOT chief Mike Carroll arrived on the scene within hours and lived out of a Jeep as he planned and orchestrated the rebuild. And thanks to the wildly popular I-95 livestream, the city had something new to cheer for.
The collapse played into the “Bad things happen in Philadelphia” narrative. The reopening less than two weeks later neatly flipped that gloomy fallacy on its head. Well played, Brotherly Lovers!
Takeout Pizza
There are times when we resent how obsessed this city can get with pizza. How in 2020 — an era in dining when we ought to be fawning over Sri Lankan curries and Nigerian jollof rice — pizza still consistently gets top billing.
And there are other times — like … now, when the world feels so unsteady — that we’re very happy seeking solace in the basics. Finding comfort in pizza. Letting Philly’s pizzaiolos, you know, take care of us in our time of need. Because if nothing else, pizza is as comforting as comfort foods get.
When we were still in the red phase, some shops, like Pizzeria Stella(420 South 2nd Street) in Society Hill, Barbuzzo (110 South 13th Street) in Midtown Village, and Wood Street Pizza (325 North 12th Street) in Callowhill (which, not for nothing, is one of the city’s best classic pizza shops), provided us with DIY pizza kits that kept us occupied and well-fed during the quarantine. Wood Street’s Dean Kitagawa even commissioned his wife, Sarah D’Ambrosio, to create artwork on some of the pizza boxes. “It was a small thing we did to establish a connection with our guests — a connection we lost when we pivoted to just doing takeout,” he says.
Philly found comfort in pizza even when the style of pizza was completely new to us. Much as it did in almost every other major food city in the U.S., Detroit-style pizza took over Philly. Of course, it got the aged-dough/high-quality-ingredients treatment we’ve become so used to seeing; witness Dan Gutter’s focaccia-like frico-crusted pies from Circles + Squares (2513 Tulip Street) in Kensington, or even his less Detroit-y pan pizzas — à la Pizza Hut — at Pizza Plus (1846 South 12th Street) in East Passyunk, or the fat, deeply caramelized squares at Sidecar Bar & Grille (2201 Christian Street) in Grad Hospital. The ranch-drizzled, banana-peppered monstrosity at Emmy Squared (632 South 5th Street) was a delicious addition to Queen Village.
Neapolitan pizza, a food trend that came as quickly as it left this city, found new life at Gigi Pizza (504 Bainbridge Street), across the street from Emmy Squared. They do a sort of hybrid NYC-meets-Napoli pie baked in a wood-burning oven, with a crust that’s somehow both airy and stiff — essentially, a big middle finger to the chewy, soupy pies favored by the Neapolitan pizza gods.
We saw our fair share of illegal pizza activity, too, which has become something of the norm in this city after @pizza_gutt paved the way back in 2017. Instagram “pizza shops” like @pizza_jawn and @freelancepizza_ began delivering pies (baked who knows where) to their thousands of eager followers.
And in maybe the longest slog of quarantine, Joe and Angela Cicala, the chef-owners of Cicala at the Divine Lorraine and former owners of Brigantessa in East Passyunk, launched an illicit pizza “speakeasy” out of their backyard in South Philly, with proceeds to help pay their laid-off staff. On its first day, the Cicalas sold 200 pizzas in 40 minutes. They sold out again on the second day. And on the third day, seven cops and two city health inspectors shut the operation down. Pizza-obsessed, indeed.