Author: Editor

Briefs

Oh, You Never Knew It! Wimple and Bing, the City’s fifth-most-famous intersection, was almost known as Wimple and Porkpie! In 1903, due to inattentive aldermen, street-naming honors had devolved to the rascals of the Bottling District. A Mr. Elliott Lamb…

The City’s Most-Storied Piece of Property

Folks often wonder whatever became of Wet-Foot Field, the stamping ground of the city’s first Ethnic-League baseball team, the Blue Stockings. Well, appropriately enough, it was excavated, lined with concrete and turned into the world-famous Swimporium public indoor swimming pools…

Boxing Day, with Industrial Solvents

In many modern urban centers Boxing Day has devolved into little more than the first opportunity for recipients of unwanted or ill-sized gifts to put them back into boxes for exchange or store credit. But at the Paulson Solvent Company…

True things

The audiobook version of John Hodgman’s The Areas of My Expertise is available for free from the iTunes store. It is an excellent book and I can assure you that it is every bit as accurate and true as the…

New Years for the Three Hoboes

It’s eleven days until New Year’s Eve, which means downtown visitors can expect to see the familiar figures of regional holiday characters Little Paul, Manuel the Turk and John Portuguese wandering the Central Corridor, Downtown, Boardwalk, South Factoryville and Daisyland…

More Christmastime in the City

:: Friday night saw the lighting of the annual Energonistics (formerly Municipal Gas Works) “Eternaflame” menorah, a ten-foot tall structure which consists of a stainless steel set of nine candles, each topped with what will be a constantly burning gas…