South Philly

Where There’s Life…There’s Pope

/ unexpectedphila

With our cars safely parked and no festival tickets in hand, we had no intention of joining the teeming mob around Pope Francis this weekend.  But, hey:  After staring out at the half-empty South Philly streets on Saturday  (“Just look at those empty parking spots!”),  we couldn’t sit home any longer.

IS  ANYONE  OUT  THERE?

So at 4 pm,  we headed up eerily traffic-free Broad Street,  past the National Guardsmen,  souvenir hawkers,  concrete barriers,  and (even more) blocks of port-a-potties,  until we reached the Jumbotrons heralding the Pope’s visit to Independence Hall…

15_09_27 1 Jumbotron CM_7015(A crowd gathers at Broad and Lombard Streets with City Hall in the background
to watch the Pope arrive at Independence Hall.) Continue reading →

The Great Photo Album Adventure (Part 5)

/ unexpectedphila

If you’ve followed our blog and website, you know that a friend gave us a fabulous housewarming gift:  a 12-pound photo album from the 1960s, packed with images from nightspots in and around South Philadelphia.

You also know that we’ve been on a grand hunt to identify the hundreds of entertainers,  sports figures,  business people,  politicians and  “just plain folks” cavorting on its pages, with the goal of donating them to Temple University’s Urban Archives for safe-keeping.

15_09_18 1 Jimmy Durante(South Philly nightclub favorite Jimmy Durante, left, with Arthur Tavani, the nightlife
columnist and photographer who assembled the photo album in the 1960s)

Now we’d like to get  you  involved in the hunt… Continue reading →

Thanks for the (Fringe Fest) Memories…

/ unexpectedphila / 4 Comments

Thanks to everyone who came out for  “Are We There Yet?”,   Kate’s mid-century, bad-postcard travel tour,  and part of the 2015 Philly Fringe Festival…

15_09_14 1 Bargain Box Cards(Want to understand the Baby Boom generation and their parents?
Look no further…)

Guests were offered bad ’60s appetizers, like pigs-in-a-blanket and a scary-looking port wine cheese roll with Ritz crackers.  And, yes, everything predictably disappeared – except for the healthy vegetable bowl…

15_09_14 2 Kate & Ann(Fellow Philadelphia Dumpster Diver Ann Keech, right, helps unload the goods. See her work at the Fringe Festival “Pope Up” show, weekends through Sept. 26.) Continue reading →

THIS WEEK: Join Kate for her Fringe Festival Show – Sept. 8 & 13!

/ unexpectedphila

Houses built from bottles.  Room-sized loaves of bread.  A restroom in a redwood tree.  Mid-century Americans could see it all – and now you can, too – along with dinosaur parks, wacky food festivals, and museums celebrating everything from atomic bombs to cypress knees…

15_09_07 1 KS bread(Your tax dollars at work at the Fort Hayes Experiment Station in Kansas)

Join me on Tuesday, Sept. 8 (7:30 pm) or Sunday, Sept. 13 (5 pm) for “Are We There Yet? Roadside Delights of the 1950s and 1960s”, a free-wheeling postcard tour of America’s oddest tourist attractions, all part of the 2015 Philadelphia Fringe Festival.

Continue reading →

Kate Out on the Fringe…uhm, Festival

/ unexpectedphila / 4 Comments

It was the first week of June, and I was panicked: I had two weeks to finish our new website and learn how to blog.  Dave was preparing for a weeklong business trip, and half our third floor was torn up for renovations.

So naturally I did what I always do when I’m overscheduled and terminally stressed:  I started a new project.

“WHAT  DO  YOU  THINK?”

“So, Dave,” I happily called as he dragged his laptop upstairs after work,  “I thought I’d sign up for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival in September.  I already have a funny slide show – the one about wacky tourist destinations from the 1950s and ’60s – so it won’t take any work to schedule some performances, especially if I do them right here in my studio.

Continue reading →

The Great Photo Album Adventure (Part 4)

/ unexpectedphila

(Kate resumes the story….)

It was March, 2014 as I nervously approached Virginia Tavani Romano’s front door with a laptop full of photos in one hand and a potted plant in the other.  For months, I’d been poring over Art Tavani’s magical 1960s photo album, trying to unlock its mysteries. Now, only four blocks from home, I was about to meet his sister and her nieces Suzanne, Clair and Elaine.

“Let’s hope they have a sense of humor,” I fretted, yanking at my newly dyed violet and teal hair…..

15_7_13 1 Kate Hair_0652

(Hey, even middle-aged girls just wanna have fun…)

Continue reading →

The Great Photo Album Adventure (Part 3)

/ unexpectedphila

(Back from vacation, Kate continues the story….)

Discovering that the mystery owner of our star-studded 1960s photo album was named Arthur Tavani and that he once worked for two South Philadelphia newspapers was pretty exciting….

15_7_8 1 Bennett(Art Tavani,  with his trusty camera,  joins the crush around singer Tony Bennett.
And,  yes,  the patterned carpet identifies this as Palumbo’s.)

Discovering that Art’s sister Virginia lived just 4 blocks from our house was….well, disconcerting. Continue reading →

The Great Photo Album Adventure (Part 2)

/ unexpectedphila

Kate continues the story….  (Click here for Part 1.)

It was January, 2013. Our 8,001 moving boxes had been emptied and recycled, and our new walls were painted — sometimes three or four different times.  And, yes, we could have easily opened a used-paint store from our kitchen colors alone….

15_6_23 1 Kitchen

Finally, there was no use delaying it:  It was time to open the 1960s  mystery photo album.

Arthur Tavani Album Continue reading →

The Great Photo Album Adventure (Part 1)

/ unexpectedphila

Sometimes the biggest adventures are the ones you don’t see coming….

It was April, 2012 and we had just moved into our South Philly home, which meant we could barely find the bed, let alone the sheets, and we needed a trapeze to navigate the shoulder-high boxes.

After three frustrating days and many tears (some of them Kate’s), we finally did the sensible thing:  We ran away to the Columbus (NJ) flea market.  At least if we bought junk there, we’d be able to find it.

But when we hooked up with our  friend Jerry at the Bagel Bums booth, he announced that he had a housewarming gift waiting in his trunk.  Jerry (not his real name; we’ll get our revenge later….) has a wild sense of humor, so we followed him through the parking lot with more than a little trepidation.

THE  MYSTERY  PHOTO  ALBUM

What could it be?  A Mayor Rizzo bobblehead doll?  A second-hand Eagles beanbag chair?  But when he threw open the trunk, we saw…..well, something we couldn’t quite identify:

Arthur Tavani Album

“Wow,” I said, “I’ve always wanted one of those…” Continue reading →