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Newsletter for Oct. 6, 2014
INSTAGRAM OF THE DAY
Breakdancer at UNIQLO’s Philly Love Fest on Saturday at the Smith Memorial Playground & Playhouse. The Japanese clothier opened a Philly branch Friday to much fanfare.
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL TO GRADUATES OF HIS ALMA MATER: FACE & ADDRESS THE WORLD’S PROBLEMS
Mumia Abu-Jamal, serving a life sentence for killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, addressed about 20 students Sunday at his alma mater, Goddard College. Abu-Jamal’s address was delivered via video to the students at the small Vermont school. Word that the students had selected the controversial Abu-Jamal, once a death row inmate with celebrity advocates, started a shitstorm. Turns out a lot of people weren’t into the idea of putting a convicted murderer on the speaker circuit. But the show went on. The speech, released to protests from Philadelphia police, avoids any mention of why the former Black Panther was jailed. He told the students that problems in places like “Gaza; Ferguson; and Iraq—again! … These are some of the challenges that abide in the world, which it will be your destiny to try and analyze and resolve. As students of Goddard, you know that those challenges are not easy, but they must be faced and addressed.” Meanwhile in Philly, as the address was played for students, the police union held a protest at 13th & Locust streets, where a plaque marks Faulkner’s shooting. They held a 30-minute vigil of silence, to drown out Abu-Jamal’s speech.
BRYN MAWR SENIORS APOLOGIZE AFTER THEIR ‘SOUTHERN PRIDE’ PISSES OFF EVERYONE
A pair of seniors at the all-female Bryn Mawr College apologized to other students last month after hanging up a Confederate flag and taping a fake “Mason-Dixon line” to the floor of their dorm room. The stunt from Rachel Hager (Bellaire, Texas) and Vanessa Felso (Alpharetta, Ga.) wasn’t well-received by pretty much anyone on campus. “I shouldn’t have to walk past a Confederate flag on the way to my Black American Sociological Perspectives class, where we literally watch videos and learn about how that flag represents hatred and the lynching of people that look like me,” senior Allegra Tomassa Massaro (also president of the NAACP, Tri-College Chapter) told The Inquirer. Granted, the flags went up on Sept. 12 and were down by Sept. 18, when Hager and Felso apologized via email. But anti-ignorance and anti-hate signs are still dotted all over campus.
TO DO: SEE PHILLY’S FIRST ANIMATED MURAL AT AN OPENING NIGHT RECEPTION
WHAT: Ghosts of Philadelphia Industry, a series of filmed vignettes portraying the city’s industrial history and labor strikes. The “animated mural,” which will be projected on the corner of Broad and Pine streets from Oct. 6-22, stars students from West Philly’s Sayre High School
WHERE: Levitt Auditorium at the Gershman Y, 400 S. Broad St.
WHEN: 6:30-8 PM
HOW MUCH: Free
DETAILS HERE
BILLY PENN LIKES
PHILLY BY DRONE: ART MUSEUM, NAVY YARD FROM 400 FT
By day, Matt Sattell works in marketing. But after he clocks out, up goes his DJI Phantom Vision 2 Quadcopter. In other words, his drone. And he’s taken some pretty stunning shots of Philadelphia and the ‘burbs from 400 feet up — the FAA-mandated flight limit for remote-controlled planes and, by extension, drones like this. The Atlantic‘s City Lab caught up with Sattell; don’t miss the fantastic aerials of the Art Museum and a stunning shot of the Navy Yard.
K.J. MCDANIELS’ CONTRACT AND WHY THE SIXERS WILL SUCK (AGAIN)
In a nutshell: It’s sort of like Moneyball, but for hoops. There are all kinds of wacky contracts in the NBA right now, as teams jockey for great free agents after only a few years. That leads to other, rebuilding squads looking for low-risk, low-cost contracts they can eventually pass to someone else. Grantland leads its piece with the contract of rookie K.J. McDaniels, who signed a one-year deal that guarantees him $0 (he gets paid! But nothing’s guaranteed). It’s part of Sixers GM Sam Hinkie‘s long game of attempting to — eventually — field a winning team. But the throwaway lines point to a loooong season at the Wells Fargo center this year. “The Sixers don’t care about winning now… the Sixers are so bad that (McDaniels is) almost guaranteed huge minutes… Hinkie’s bosses have green-lit an unprecedented multiyear exercise in losing.” On the plus side, tickets should be cheap on StubHub this year.
