Everybody Wants to Know if Philly’s Jeopardy! Champ Is Single

Philadelphia Jeopardy! champ Greg Shahade (photo courtesy Greg Shahade)

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When I watched Monday night’s edition of Jeopardy! to see how my acquaintance Greg Shahade did on the show, I had no idea that the Rittenhouse Square resident and international chess champion was going to end Jamie Ding’s 31-game winning streak and become the new champion. I was as surprised as the rest of the viewers. But soon after he won, something else began to surprise me.

“Is he available?” one Philly friend asked me, after my interview with Shahade published. Soon after, someone else asked me the same version of that question — this time, a guy. Another friend, who works in an office in Center City, told me on Wednesday that Shahade’s “hotness” was the subject of much cafeteria conversation among the ladies the day before, prior to him winning a second match that evening. (He’s onto game four tonight.)

And as I looked around on social media comments on my own story and the countless other stories about him that have been published since then, it is quite clear that this 47-year-old brainiac is a bona fide Jeopardy! heartthrob. Need further proof? More people are searching for “Greg Shahade wife” on Google than are searching for “Greg Shahade Jeopardy.”

Shahade says he’s been getting lots of messages, including some of a more, shall we say, intimate nature. “Just like a little weird, slightly odd stuff,” he explains. “People don’t know me, it’s just sending like a weird proposition in my inbox or something. I don’t wanna go into too much detail.” On Wednesday night, he texted me, describing some of the messages as “mildly stalking.”

Philadelphia resident Greg Shahade on Jeopardy! / Image courtesy of ABC/Jeopardy!)

So … is Greg Shahade married? Does he have a wife? A husband? What’s the deal? America wants to know, as they do with any attractive celebrity, whether they’re a Hollywood-level celeb or a mere Jeopardy! champ. We are a celebrity-obsessed culture, for better or for worse.

Shahade is most certainly unmarried. He’s also non-monogamous. He is, in fact, polyamorous.

“I’m never going to be monogamous, but I’m not, like, really super actively seeking things right now,” he says. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not open to things. Does that make sense?”

He’s not private about being polyamorous. His Instagram bio is “Chess, Jeopardy, CrossFit, Poly, Donut Expert”, and he has blogged about his experience being polyamorous. The outlet TV Insider headlined their article about his Monday win “Meet Greg Shahade, Polyamorous Chess Master Who Defeated Jamie Ding” and even swiped photos from his social media accounts depicting him with his polyamorous partners.

“They did it because they figure it’s gonna get them the most views, because polyamory to people is very divisive,” he observes. “Like, it makes people crazy to even hear the word.”

Shahade had some concerns about talking about being polyamorous for the purposes of this article. “A lot of the articles on polyamory make it sound like really crazy, and like exotic and like, whoa, like what is this weird thing that’s happening? But for me it’s just kind of, like, not that strange. It’s pretty normal or, I wouldn’t say it’s boring exactly, but it’s not like crazy things are happening. I feel like I live a pretty normal romantic life. One of the most important things for me is to kind of help make polyamory more mainstream.”

Polyamory is, of course, different things to different people who practice it. For some, it might mean that they have two partners and that there are clear rules about what interactions are like and also about whether any of them can see other people. “For me, I wanna have freedom, and I want everyone I’m close to to have freedom to do the things they want,” Shahade explains. “It’s nice when there are no limits to what kind of connection you can have with a new person you meet, and it makes life easier when there’s just no rules. But the thing that makes it a lot easier for me is that I don’t feel jealousy in the way that most people do.”

OK, Greg. But clearly the people want to know: is he available?

“I wouldn’t say ‘available,'” he answers. “I don’t go around just talking about how I’m ‘available,’ but I’m always happy to meet new, cool people that I find interesting and connect with well. I don’t like the idea of somebody not being ‘available’ because of another person, and the people I’m close to are the same. But I know that society is very monogamous, and that usually once you’re in a relationship, you just shut down all kinds of relationships with other people, and for me, that’s just not how I do things.”

Should Philly Restaurants Add Auto-Gratuity During the World Cup?

Food and drink at Sonny’s Cocktail Joint in Philadelphia, which already has an auto-gratuity policy. Will more Philadelphia restaurants add an auto-gratuity to all checks during the World Cup in Philadelphia? (photo by Eddy Marenco)

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Over the course of 39 days in June and July, amid all of our semiquincentennial festivities, more than 500,000 tourists are expected to descend upon Philadelphia for the six FIFA World Cup matches we are hosting at Lincoln Financial Field and the free FIFA Fan Festival in Fairmount Park. Given the fact that the rest of the world cares about soccer exponentially more than do we in this fragile republic, a large number of those tourists will likely be from countries where tipping is not customary. And so the Pennsylvania Restaurant & Lodging Association (PRLA), the trade association representing the tourism and hospitality industry in the state, is proposing that Philadelphia restaurants add a 20 percent auto-gratuity to all checks.

“Our first goal is to protect the employees,” says Ben Fileccia, the longtime Philadelphia restaurant veteran turned senior vice president of strategy and engagement at PRLA. “We have tens of thousands of tipped employees in Philadelphia, and they will be showing off this city and providing incredible hospitality while serving all of these international guests.”

Tipping protocols vary from country to country. In some countries, there is no tipping at all, while in others, tipping is minimal and far from the 15 to 20 percent level that your average diner in Philadelphia leaves. Some Philadelphia restaurants, like Provenance, Juana Tamale, Sonny’s Cocktail Joint, and WineDive Rittenhouse, already have an auto-gratuity policy, but the vast majority do not.

“We don’t want our wonderful servers to have to explain anything about our tipping norms to each guest,” Fileccia explains. “It will get complicated and uncomfortable. This way, it will be very fair, and, again, we’re only talking about 39 days. When you have an international guest here or there, it washes out at the end of the night as far as the servers’ tips are concerned. But when you suddenly have a bunch and many may congregate at the same restaurants, that can really change the outcome.”

Restaurants markets elsewhere in the country have also been considering the idea. But the New Jersey Restaurant and Hospitality Association has not gone so far as to tell its members to add an automatic gratuity. They are, instead, focused on educating the diners about cultural differences here.

“I definitely would be pro-mandatory tips if it eliminates awkwardness and confusion with foreign guests and ensures everyone is making the money they deserve,” offers Justin Bacharach, executive chef and co-owner at Rittenhouse hotspot dancerobot.

Bacharach says he spoke with servers at the bar and restaurant to get their take. One server said they’d be fine without mandatory gratuity and that they’ve had guests from a non-tipping culture who still tip, just maybe not 20 percent. Another told him they were all for the automatic tip, because they felt that they would be working even harder than normal, and so their compensation should match their increased efforts.

One person who is definitely not a fan of the idea is Fergus “Fergie” Carey, owner of Fergie’s Pub, the Jim, and the soon-to-debut The Monto in Old City. He’s originally from the soccer-worshipping country of Ireland, which also happens to be a place where you simply don’t tip. When he runs his annual tours to his homeland, he instructs his guests not to tip. And when foreign visitors come to Philadelphia for the World Cup, he imagines many will come and respect our culture and tip, though perhaps to less of a degree than a Philadelphian would.

“I don’t think we should make a big change just because we have some new people coming,” Carey insists. “If somebody is coming over to my house, I don’t change the way I do things just because I have a visitor.”

Carey says he really doesn’t believe that his employees will be compensated less during the World Cup, overall.

“But I think we can play it by ear,” he suggests, adding that if there’s suddenly an epidemic of no-tipping at his spots, he could make a change a couple of weeks in and add an auto-gratuity.

Not so fast, says Fileccia.

“This is exactly what we don’t want,” he insists. “We want it to be implemented fairly and just have restaurants plan on doing it ahead of time. Otherwise, they are going to have a customer come in during the first two weeks, and there is no automatic gratuity, and they come back, and all of a sudden there is one.”

Plus, Fileccia explains, if you want to start an automatic gratuity program, you really need to talk to your payroll company and accountant.

“It’s not as easy as just flipping a switch,” he says. “Plus, once a tip becomes automatic, it is a ‘service charge’, and the legal implications of that are different as far as the IRS is concerned. It changes the tax responsibility.”

Marc Vetri, the mastermind behind Vetri Cucina (where Fileccia once worked as general manager) and Fiorella says that he doesn’t have auto-gratuity at his restaurants, nor will he for the World Cup. “And I definitely would not advocate for it,” he states. “I mean, I just don’t understand the point. We have international customers all the time.”

Of course, all of this chatter about hundreds of thousands of people visiting from other countries — roughly half of those aforementioned 500,000 are projected to be traveling internationally to get here — highlights the glaring fact that tipping doesn’t exist in those countries in part because the compensation system is completely different in some of those places; a server in a French restaurant doesn’t need tips to make a living wage, because they are paid well by their employer. If you were to yank tipping entirely from Philadelphia, the whole system would fall apart. So isn’t this a good time to think about how our system could be better?

“We talk to servers and bartenders constantly, and the way we do things actually works for them,” Fileccia counters. “The vast majority do not want us to change the way that restaurants here operate.”

Mother’s Day Is an Unhappy Day for Millions – One West Philly Woman Wants to Help

Meirav Ong, who leads grief weaving workshops in Philadelphia (photo by Anwar Ali)

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For many, Mother’s Day means brunch, Hallmark cards, and beautiful bouquets. But for others, it’s far from a happy occasion. This was a fact to which I was admittedly ignorant until several years ago when, on Mother’s Day, the pastor at my West Philly Presbyterian church shared the following prayer, which I’ve since shared every year on social media:

It was the loss of her mother that led West Philadelphia textile artist and self-described “grief tender” Meirav Ong to launch a “grief weaving” series of workshops at her studio near Clark Park, where she leads other weaving workshops such as Weaving 101 and a weaving and stitching camp for kids over the summer. Her next grief weaving workshop is on May 9th, the day before Mother’s Day, and is specifically focused on the grief that people can have surrounding that holiday. It’s called Grief Weaving: Dead Mom Club Edition.

“I joined the dead mom club eleven years ago, when I was 25,” Ong explains. “It’s the worst club you can ever join. She had gastric cancer and died within 14 months of her diagnosis.”

Ong says she found that the process of weaving, which includes working with your hands and lots of repetitive motions, all while creating a piece of art, helped her deal with her grief, something that Sinko says makes perfect sense to her.

“There’s a power in physical movement, particularly physical movement with a repetitive nature, that can really help you externalize anxiety,” she explains. “And art can be a very beautiful way to share what you cannot or do not feel comfortable saying with words.”

Plus, she says, an event like Ong’s grief weaving workshop allows you to be around others who are grieving, but where you are are working on a project like creating art, as opposed to sitting around in a circle talking about your grief. “It’s all about the community, being around others,” she observes. “You don’t feel as alone. You have this companionship of people who have a shared experience.”

Ong begins the grief-weaving workshops with vocal toning, a common meditation technique where all of the attendees hum together in a way designed to create vibrations throughout their bodies.

“Through your exhalations, you vocalize different vowel sounds associated with different parts of your body,” Ong says. “It’s an audible exhalation that I like to think clears the sticky junk out of your body on a cellular level through vibrations. It’s like ‘shaking it out.’ And it’s something really powerful when you do it in a resonant harmony with others.”

Then it’s off to weave. Each attendee gets their own frame loom, which is similar to those looms you might have made potholders on when you were a kid, but larger.

An attendee at one of Ong’s previous grief weaving workshops in Philadelphia

Ong provides the yarn and other materials, and also suggests that each attendee bring supplemental materials and ephemera related in some way to their grief; those materials are worked in with the yarn. “The idea is that you will leave with a piece of wall art that you created out of your grief.”

For West Philadelphia resident Brook Chambers, who attended one of Ong’s workshops in December, those supplemental materials were pieces of clothing worn by her grandfather, who died last August, as well as the shirt she wore to his funeral.

“There’s this part of the workshop where we all ripped our fabrics into long strips, and that was a really energetic release for me,” Chambers recalls. “Meirav really helped me transform my grief into a comforting object that has an energy all its own. It’s a manifestation of this heartbreak and distress, taking those ripped pieces and making something beautiful.”

The wall art that Brook Chambers made at the grief weaving workshop in December (photo courtesy Brook Chambers)

Northampton, Massachusetts-based marriage and family therapist Ellie Lotan met Ong at Melacha U’Vracha, a retreat in Vermont that centers on Jewish ancestral skills, and invited her to Northampton to lead a grief-weaving workshop. Lotan wasn’t grieving the death of a loved one, at least not in the normal meaning of that phrase.

“My daughter is getting older, and for me, it’s all about the grief that comes with that, the grief of having your baby not be a baby anymore,” Lotan tells me. “So I gathered things from her babyhood — pajamas that didn’t fit her anymore, a baby blanket — and created a beautiful piece of work using those. It’s now hanging in my daughter’s room.”

Ong’s grief-weaving workshops last for four hours or so, and she says that if you’re not one who wants to openly talk about your grief, this is the place for you. “The workshops are all about sharing in a creative way, but they are not rooted in talking,” she says. “I personally find that ‘grief spaces’ that are very focused on verbal sharing to be really exhausting, and so my hope is to create a space where you can quiet your mind and use your hands for making, allowing you to be with whatever comes up in that making process.”

The cost for the workshop is $225 (or $350 for two people) and space is very limited. You can register here. More grief-weaving workshops are scheduled for June, July and September.

Philly Chess Master Talks Defeating Jamie Ding on Jeopardy!

Philadelphia chess master Greg Shahade, who defeated Jamie Ding on Jeopardy on Monday night / Photograph courtesy of ABC/Jeopardy

The Flyers lost on Monday night, yes. But Philadelphia still scored a major win, with Rittenhouse Square resident Greg Shahade ending Jamie Ding’s 31-game winning streak on Jeopardy!. Shahade didn’t just beat Ding. He beat him by $13,990. We caught up with Shahade right after the match, which he watched at the home of his sister Jen Shahade, professional poker player, chess wiz, and author of the new book Thinking Sideways: How to Think Like a Chess Player and Win at Life. (Smart family.)

Congratulations on your big win. How are you celebrating?
We had a bunch of people over, and now my nephew is excitedly watching the Flyers game, so I had to move to a quieter place.

I love that you just won Jeopardy!, defeating Jamie Ding, who had close to $900,000 in winnings, and instead of having dinner at Parc, you’re watching the Flyers game.
I didn’t say I was watching it. He is watching it.

Got it. What was your process getting onto Jeopardy!?
I got into trivia late in life, like a few years ago. I took the online Jeopardy! test a few times, and the first time they invited me to do a second test was in August 2024. I took the second test. Then they invited me to do an interview-type thing. They already know at that point that you know trivia, but they also need to know if you would make a good cast member. They want to make sure that you can speak in a reasonable manner. And they want to know what you’re into, what your interests are. And then in January, they invited me to be on the show.

And aside from trivia, what are your interests?
Well, I’m an International Master at chess, which is one level under Grandmaster. I come from a chess family. My sister won the U.S. Women’s Championship of Chess a few times, and my dad is a four-time Pennsylvania state chess champion. And I’m really into CrossFit. I go to CrossFit OBA on Washington Aveue and Orangetheory in Center City.

What’s it actually like the day of the taping?
They tape five shows in a day, and when you get there, you don’t know if you’re gonna play the first game of the day or what. I think they draw names out of a hat. It’s randomly decided. And I got drawn for the first game. You do a practice round so everybody can get used to the buzzer, and if you’re not good at the buzzer for some reason, they will tell you what you are doing wrong. I had no issues with the buzzer, but I was very, very nervous.

And when you saw the categories, was there one that made you particularly nervous?
Not really. I knew that I’d be better at some categories than others. Like, there was a fashion category. I wasn’t very good at that, but then you still have five other categories out there in each round. And even if you’re not good at a certain category, sometimes you still get the answers right anyway.

What does it take to be successful on Jeopardy!?
It’s a tough question. There’s so much that goes into it. And this game could have been different. Like, there’s an alternate universe where I show up and get totally crushed. That could have happened. But you have to play a lot of practice games online. You have to study a lot of old Jeopardy! matches. And then betting strategy is huge. You have to be a little aggressive with your bets, and it also helps if you can find those Daily Doubles. I found all three.

Greg Shahade and family members right after his Jeopardy! win

And you made some very big bets on them, which made me nervous.
I knew I was going to go all in. It wasn’t a close decision, because in my training, I get the Daily Doubles right about 83 percent of the time, which is a very high number. So I really needed to bet on myself and just hope that the question is one that I know. And the one — the one about Oscar Wilde — I knew what it was but I just couldn’t get the name of the play out. I was really panicked. Time was running out, and I was just going through every single Oscar Wilde play in my head and just before time ran out came up with, “What is Lady Windermere’s Fan?” And, fortunately, I was right.

What’s your advice on betting for future contestants?
Well, it depends on how often you get the questions right in training. Me, I’m at 83 percent. But if your number is 60 percent, that would change it. You also have to think about what your opponents’ scores are and their strength levels. I know that Jamie is very, very, very good, so I wanna be aggressive and just take my shot, whereas let’s say I’m playing somebody where I am just much, much better than them, I might not want to risk it. But overall, you should be pretty aggressive.

The Double Jeopardy round was a real nail-biter. You had quite the lead over Jamie, but he was slowly catching up. But then you ended the round with just more than double his money, meaning it was all over unless you did something outrageously stupid with your Final Jeopardy bet.
Right, and it turns out that we all got Final Jeopardy right, but it didn’t matter at that point. The whole thing was like an out of body experience. There was so much adrenaline pushing through me.

What were your interactions with Jamie like before the match? Was he trying to psych you out?
No, no. He is like the sweetest person — really, really nice. Before the match, I did hype myself up a bit. Hit my chest a little bit, just kind of like to get pumped.

And after?
He said some really nice things. And when I got back to the green room, where all the other contestants for the day are, everybody was applauding. I guess because it was a good game but also because they were probably happy not to have to face a 31-day champion. And then they moved me to the champion’s dressing room — you get your own dressing room once you win. And then, you’re right back out there playing again in 20 minutes. You just had one of the biggest moments of your life, and then they throw me right back out there.

Getting back to the betting, are you a poker player like Jen?
No, no. I used to be a professional poker player, but I basically stopped in 2011 after Black Friday. Then I taught Jen some things, and now she’s a professional poker player.

So should I bet on you winning again tonight? I know you can’t tell me, but what’s going to happen?
All I will say is that I’m playing two very nice people on Tuesday night. [Laughs]

From Rocky to Rizzo: Monument Expert Paul Farber Talks Statues and Public Spaces

Paul Farber, who just moved the Rocky statue inside the Philadelphia Museum of Art / Photograph by Kyle Kielinski

Few people know more about monuments than Paul Farber. He’s the founder of Monument Lab, a Philadelphia-based public art and history organization that studies how monuments shape our understanding of the past — and how communities can rethink them. His new exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, “Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments,” sees the Rocky statue moving inside the museum and examines how a statue of a fictional boxer became the city’s most famous work of art — and what that says about our collective memory. Here, the Mount Airy resident talks about our obsession with a movie prop, the dismantling of the Frank Rizzo statue, and how all of this relates to the Berlin Wall.

Paul, how is it that a kid from Mount Airy became one of the nation’s leading experts on monuments?
Victor, first, I need to thank you. A few years ago, you wrote something previewing my WHYY podcast about the Rocky statue, and you said of me, “He’s no schmuck.” I keep meaning to put that on my business card.

I do what I can.
But to answer your question, I graduated from Penn with a degree in urban studies and then received my PhD in American culture at the University of Michigan. The whole time, I knew I wanted to do the work of social change, and I needed to find a pathway for that, which became monuments. I didn’t really find monuments. They found me.

How did that develop?
I wrote my dissertation about the Berlin Wall and kept bumping into pieces of the wall displayed across the country — in a presidential library, in subway stations, in a casino, in a food court. And I wondered, if these pieces of the wall have been displaced from Germany and are now popping up all over the United States, how does that help us understand our monuments? Then I taught a class at Penn on monuments in urban spaces. And I founded Monument Lab in 2012.

And when it comes to the Berlin Wall, how does that fit into the world of monuments? It certainly wasn’t built as a monument.
Right, it’s what we call an “unintentional monument.” It was set up as a physical barrier but became very much a part of the cultural imagination. For example, when Robert F. Kennedy went to Berlin in 1962 (one year before his brother would say “Ich bin ein Berliner”), he said, “We have a wall of our own: a wall of segregation.” So the Berlin Wall became a part of political discourse in that respect but over time also turned up in Alvin and the Chipmunks and Golden Girls episodes and in poetry written by Michael Jackson.

So I think this is a good place for you to define monuments, because it’s clearly much broader than Frank Rizzo and Rocky.
Well, at Monument Lab, we define a monument as a statement of power that has a public presence. But broadly, there is no single definition of monument in our culture. After conversations with literally tens of thousands of people in public spaces over the last 15 years, especially outside of City Hall and in public parks in Philadelphia, it’s clear that people think of the bronze and marble figures towering over them as monuments. But they also use the word to talk about historic sites and spaces, murals, mosaics, archaeology, museums, as well as acts of protest — ways they see history making an imprint.

I’m pretty sure I’ve never known someone to get so excited about monuments.
[Laughs] I’m actually very ambivalent about monuments. I believe it’s really important to have symbols that last beyond your own generation, but I don’t think that a monument alone saves us. Monuments are both at the center of cultural conversation and also really hard to understand. If you want to know the history of a place or person, you look for a documentary, you read a book, you talk to local residents to find out the narrative. You don’t go to a statue and read a plaque or stare at a figure frozen above you.

In preparing for this interview, I was thinking about my own experience with and memory of monuments, and one image that kept returning to my mind’s eye was that of the Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad being toppled two years after 9/11.
The tearing down of monuments dates back to antiquity. Gestures of the new power. Monuments are built with an intention of permanence, but that often isn’t what happens. The first monument takedown in the United States was in July of 1776. Upon the reading of the Declaration of Independence in Lower Manhattan, people pulled down the statue of King George III and melted it, in part for Revolutionary War bullets.

In 2021, Monument Lab conducted the first-ever audit of America’s monument landscape, looking at upwards of 50,000 monuments across the country. Give me one point of data that stood out.
There are way more monuments to mermaids than to U.S. congresswomen who actually lived. The audit gave us a lot of insight into what we choose to remember and how we choose to remember it.

The conversation surrounding monuments seemed to take a major turn in the 2010s when people started tearing down Confederate monuments.
That’s right. And before long, it reached a fever pitch.

Prior to the 2020 removal of the Frank Rizzo statue in Philly, I spoke with the sculptor who created it. His thought was that instead of removing the bronze, why not add features and exhibits that put the statue in historical context, that explain the various controversies surrounding Rizzo.
The problem with that is in how monuments communicate. They communicate often beyond language and from a distance. Most monuments in public spaces are meant to be seen from hundreds of feet away, so the addition of a plaque or a QR code doesn’t do the job. Maybe you could have a sign as big as a billboard, maybe projections, maybe local students as live interpreters. But that requires three things: maintenance, money, and mindsets.

What was your reaction to seeing the so-called Gravy SEALs come out with their AR-15s to “protect” the Columbus statue in South Philly?
It was upsetting but not surprising. We’ve seen similar armed patrols with Confederate monuments around the country. But, yes, what do we do with all the Columbus statues? It’s hard, because it’s viewed as a zero-sum game; it’s “us versus them,” like there just isn’t a path forward. Christopher Columbus has become a symbol, including in places he never set foot or could ever have dreamt of. The armed patrols certainly don’t speak for every person, but they do communicate the loudest. We need to find the in-betweens and find coalition. I’ve seen it work. It just takes focus, purpose, and resources to really try to knit together understanding.

I’ve been closely watching the work of Avenging the Ancestors and Michael Coard surrounding the opening of the slavery exhibit at the President’s House in 2010 and, more recently, Trump’s attempts to remove that same exhibit. What are your thoughts?
Avenging the Ancestors are among the most important monument builders and advocates that this country has seen in a long time. They epitomize what history can be for us: telling the full truth. You can’t separate freedom and enslavement; they go together. In a moment of what is a relentless attack on history and truth, you now have people fighting both in the courts and out in public space. And now Philadelphia is in the headlines for standing up for what is right.

And now for a far less serious matter: Is it fair to say that the most internationally famous monument in Philadelphia is, in fact, a movie prop?
[Laughs] Here you have an object that was made for a movie, specifically for Rocky III, that has become the most visited and renowned monument in Philadelphia. Four million people visit it every year. Those are Statue of Liberty numbers! There are many, many other statues that have been movie props that don’t get elevated to monuments, and there are also other statues depicting figures from pop culture that are largely ignored. There’s something so fascinating, beautiful, strange, and meaningful about the way that this statue has become a monument.

What is your reaction to people who roll their eyes at Rocky?
I admit that I was initially dismissive of the Rocky statue as a monument. I scoffed at its significance as a cultural artifact. It was my mom, Ruth, who called me out on this. She pointed out to me the line that forms to see it, every day of the year. No matter the weather. No matter the time. And she said there’s a lot to be learned from that line. So I spent a number of years just spending time at the line and talking to people. And what really struck me was the blurring of art and life. Monuments can be in the eye of the beholder. Also, the Rocky statue could have been made out of Styrofoam for the purpose of the film, but it wasn’t. It was commissioned as a real fine-art sculpture in bronze from a real artist. So it’s been a growing process, and when you see it now, the way it’s risen to the level of symbolism both on and off the site, it’s deeply interesting. But it’s not lost on me that this is a statue to the most famous Philadelphian who never lived.

So just to catch readers up: Sylvester Stallone said last year that he wanted the original Rocky statue back and gave a bronze copy to the city. That copy is sitting at the top of the Art Museum steps. But then he relented and said the city could keep the original and that he would take back the copy. That original is now inside the Art Museum for your just-opened exhibit, “Rising Up: Rocky and the Making of Monuments,” after which it will go on top of the steps. Meanwhile, the Joe Frazier statue that was erected down by the Sports Complex in 2015 will be installed at the site of the original Rocky statue at the bottom of the Art Museum steps.
Phew! There has been a lot of back and forth.

I don’t mind telling you that I am not a fan of this plan, that the fake boxer should not look down from above on the actual Philly man who was one of the greatest heavyweights of all time.
When we have interviewed people over the years about monuments they would like to see in Philadelphia, Joe Frazier’s name comes up consistently. In our exhibition, Joe Frazier is a major protagonist, and part of that is actually the entanglement of his story with the Rocky franchise. Before Rocky became a Hollywood character, Joe Frazier ran up the Art Museum steps, he ran through the streets of Philadelphia, he worked in a Kensington slaughterhouse where he trained by punching raw sides of beef.

In one of Rocky’s more memorable scenes, Stallone himself punches beef in a slaughterhouse.
Originally, Stallone actually wanted Joe Frazier to be in Rocky III, with Frazier playing Clubber Lang. But as part of the audition, Frazier and Stallone had a sparring session, and Frazier hit him so hard that, as Stallone put it years later, it felt like having a piano fall on him. He said he was reminded that actors act and boxers box. You simply cannot tell the story of Rocky without telling the story of Joe Frazier.

Would you agree that the Art Museum steps themselves have also become a monument in a way that the museum itself is not?
Yes. How many people run up those steps each year? People flock there. It’s this pilgrimage where people really lay down their burdens. They come almost as a civic sacred offering. And there is something legitimately extraordinary happening there in our understanding of monuments. At the same time, when you stand at the Joe Frazier statue or in front of his shuttered gym in North Philly, you feel a lack of will regarding the preservation and acknowledgment of real-life boxers — especially Black boxers — that marks a disparity in resources and spotlight. And that is something that is very ordinary in our monument landscape. If I had a magic wand, I’d make sure there was real investment in Frazier’s gym itself.

What are you trying to say with this exhibit?
When you go to the Rocky statue, appreciate that there are protagonists all around us, some historic, some still living. Look around you and see all the stories but also see the gaps in how we translate these stories into real-life commemoration. We have over 150 pieces of artwork and artifacts that cover thousands of years of human history.

Will I finally understand Philly’s Rockymania after seeing “Rising Up”?
The question at the center of this exhibit is this: Why do millions of people each year visit the Rocky statue? And in each gallery, we kind of answer that in a different way. It’s a show about monuments through the framework of what is fascinating and meaningful and strange about this monument — while also taking seriously people’s engagement with it and opening up a broader conversation.

Beyond the Rocky Statue

Keith Haring’s We the Youth mural / Photograph by Matt Rourke/Associated Press

Paul Farber picks his three favorite less-recognized monuments.

Underground Railroad Site
William and Letitia Still were huge figures in the Abolitionist movement, and their rowhome still exists, as does the original marble stoop over which Harriet Tubman, who took more trips to Philadelphia than did William Penn, often passed.” 625 South Delhi Street

Keith Haring’s We the Youth Mural
Philadelphia has one of the few surviving Keith Haring–created public murals, and this is one he painted with local children in 1987. It is a true rarity, an international treasure that is constantly under threat by developers and needs our protection. Many people have seen it, but too many of us take it for granted.” 22nd and Ellsworth streets

Pro Bono Fountain
There was a time when the public didn’t have access to free, safe drinking water, and this was the first public fountain of its kind in Philadelphia, presented to the Fairmount Park Commission in 1854 by a local paper-mill mogul. The spring-fed fountain itself was sealed in the 1950s due to pollution and water-safety issues, but the carved white marble and granite are still there, looking like an entrance to a temple. The inscription on it reads Pro bono publico, which translates to ‘for the public good.’ And then underneath it is inscribed Esto perpetua, which means ‘let it remain here forever.’ The model proved successful, and, by 1890, there were 50 such fountains in Philadelphia.” Forbidden Drive between Margarge Dam and the Rex Avenue Bridge

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Published as “From Rocky to Rizzo” in the May 2026 issue of Philadelphia magazine.

Inside One South Philly Couple’s Cat Nightmare

Left: William and Valerie Cowan outside their South Philadelphia home (photo by Victor Fiorillo) | Right: Just some of the cats next door (photo via court exhibit)

       Listen to the audio edition here:

William and Valerie Cowan have a lovely home in the East Passyunk neighborhood of South Philadelphia. It’s tastefully decorated. It’s lovingly appointed. The three-bedroom house, which they share with their toddler and will soon share with a newborn, is immaculately clean. There’s just one problem: it smells like cats — a lot like cats, a lot like a lot of cats — as I discovered when I did a walk-through last Friday.

“It’s been quite horrible,” says Valerie, who works as a nurse practitioner in the medical ICU at Jefferson. “I’m trying to sleep at night, which is already hard enough at nine months pregnant, and the smell upstairs in our master bedroom has been unmanageable.”

It’s not much better elsewhere in the home, where that unmistakable ammonia scent (as well as some other animal-like odor that clings to your tongue) hits you as soon as you walk through the door. I could only last about five minutes before walking outside to get fresh air.

The source of the foulness is inarguably the cat situation next door to the Cowans. Their immediate neighbor to the south, with whom they share a wall, has a history of keeping numerous unspayed and unneutered cats inside in unsanitary conditions, a history that began in full force during COVID. They roam the streets, they pile into the windows, they make noises at all hours that the neighbors can hear and, yes, they pee and poop pretty much everywhere they can, leading to that aforementioned and most unwelcome aroma.

According to the Cowans, they didn’t notice anything odd in the air when they toured their house before moving from Queen Village in 2020. But that soon changed, and the scent became inescapable by the summer of 2024. The smell permeated their entire house, and flowed out freely onto the street. The Cowans soon noticed hundreds of flies in the neighbor’s windows. This fly problem quickly became their fly problem, and they estimate that they killed close to 850 inside their home during the summer of 2025. They actually used a white board to keep track:

(photo via court exhibit)

The Cowans reached out to the neighbor to try to find a resolution. She was apologetic and told them that she was trying to come up with a solution. But the cats remained and seemed to grow in number. The stench persisted. In March 2025, the Cowans’ daughter, Clare, was hospitalized for days due to a bacterial infection; during her recovery at home she had a compromised immune system, which alarmed the couple given the unsanitary conditions next door, as they expressed to their neighbor.

As the neighbor (who we’re not naming) tells it, she began taking in cats during COVID and, at one point, agreed to take a pregnant cat from a friend. A series of deaths in her family and the sense of isolation during COVID led to the deterioration of her mental health, she says, and her home and housekeeping deteriorated right along with it. Things just unraveled.

The Cowans say they have lots of sympathy for her – it’s kind of impossible not to – but at the end of the day, their house stinks and they want something done about it. So the couple called the Pennsylvania Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PSPCA). According to PSPCA spokesperson Gillian Kocher, the organization’s Animal Law Enforcement division has been out to the home 20 times and removed more than 40 cats.

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“However, due to the physical condition of the home and the cats’ ability to hide within the structure itself, we are unable to safely capture them without the owner’s commitment to using humane traps or making structural changes to prevent cats from moving between floors and wall spaces,” Kocher explains.

The cat owner concurs that there are holes and other problems with the home that make it possible for the animals to evade capture, but she insists that she’s been fully cooperative with the PSPCA officers.

The Department of Licenses & Inspections has also paid the home multiple visits, starting in the sticky summer of 2025. Since then, inspectors have issued more than 20 violations. In March, inspectors noted several issues, from the “storage of combustible rubbish” to the presence of “cat feces and urine” to “an unpleasant smell throughout the property… that is also affecting the neighboring properties” to structural problems.

Then there is the lawsuit. Last summer, the Cowans hired an attorney to take their neighbor to court; the neighbor is representing herself, telling me that she cannot afford to hire an lawyer. The suit, filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court in August, argues that the neighbor’s actions or lack thereof have made their home virtually uninhabitable, citing “noxious” odors.

“The odor and resulting conditions constitute a real, substantial, and unreasonable interference with [the Cowans’] use and enjoyment of their property,” reads the suit. “The harm suffered is more than a slight inconvenience or petty annoyance, and would be found offensive, seriously annoying, and intolerable to a normal person living in the community.”

The attorney also collected affidavits from three other neighbors attesting to the problems at the home.

A PSPCA rescue operation at the cat owner’s South Philadelphia home (image via court exhibit)

One said that she could see multiple cats in the home’s windows “crawling on top of each other,” as the affidavit reads. “It seems to me like they were trying to access the fresh air … Kittens were continuously in the windows, which makes me believe that the cats inside were breeding.”

“I am concerned about my ability to sell my home given the persistent odor,” wrote another. “I am also concerned about the welfare of [the] cats. I do not believe that living in a row home in the city is a place where someone can keep 20 or more cats … or take care of them in a way that they deserve.”

The suit sought not monetary damages against the cat owner but rather an injunction against her, preventing the offending activity. On March 11th, the judge granted the injunction and ordered the neighbor to contact the PSPCA within five days to arrange for the surrender of all of the cats in her home. They also gave her 30 days to hire a professional cleaning company “certified to clean biohazardous waste” to properly clean, sanitize and remediate the property. After said remediation, the judge said that she could possess a maximum of two cats and that they must be spayed and neutered.

It’s been more than a month, and the Cowans’ neighbor still hasn’t surrendered all of the cats in her home. She tells us that she has eight. I saw two in her windows.

She also hasn’t hired a company to clean the house, claiming that she’s received estimates close to $10,000, money she says she just doesn’t have. (The Cowans say they have offered to contribute to the cost of cleaning.)

“I don’t want to live like this,” the neighbor says. “But I don’t know what to do. I have no one who can help me.”

I asked William how he plans to proceed, given that she’s in clear violation of the judge’s order.

“We can hold her in contempt, but like, what are we gonna do?” he said, noting that they’d already spent about $40,000 in legal expenses. “Fine her, and then she’s not going to pay? Our lawyer said, ‘You could pay for the cleaning,’ and I’m like, oh great, another $10,000? How do we even get into her house to clean. How does that even work?”

Valerie is due on May 14th and says she’s concerned about how the ongoings might be affecting her pregnancy. “I’m not having direct contact with the cat urine or feces,” she notes. “I think the biggest health concern is actually more the stress that the whole ordeal will put on my body and the baby, how the stress impacts the developing pregnancy.”

So what’s left to be done? Perhaps the only thing that can reasonably be done: move.

“We are considering leaving,” William says. “We’re meeting with a realtor to try to figure out our options. But we love our house. It’s a block away from the elementary school. Our plan was to raise our kids in the city. We don’t want to move, we’re trying to fight it as much as possible to stay in our house.”