For the Ardmore-based fashion company American Trench, it’s all about looking sharp and staying stateside. “We make some pieces of classic menswear that guys can identify with as super useful investment pieces,” says cofounder Jacob Hurwitz. When the brand launched its first product in 2013, Hurwitz says he and cofounder David Neill were driven by
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Philly AIDS Thrift was born out of a love for junk and an activist spirit, says Christina Kallas-Saritsoglou, cofounder and executive director of the nonprofit thrift store. “I think we’ve done a pretty good job creating this safe space for people,” Kallas-Saritsoglou says. “It’s a little bit more than a thrift store; it’s a real
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Philadelphia band Darling Damselfly wants their most recent album, “Galapagos,” to get listeners thinking about human’s relationship with the planet — in the hopes of saving it. “Being able to have a better understanding and appreciation of the wonder of [the environment] can help us be more connected and want to work harder to combat
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Darling Damselfly, a Philadelphia-based band, wants their most recent album, “Galapagos,” to get listeners thinking about humankind’s relationship with the planet — in the hopes of saving it. “Being able to have a better understanding and appreciation of the wonder of [the environment] can help us be more connected and want to work harder to
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Jennifer Skirkanich updated her kitchen exhaust fan after an air quality monitor reminded her just how dangerous cooking can be. “You don’t ever think about it, but seeing the light turn red is like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s harmful,’” says Skirkanich, a biologist and West Philadelphia resident who teaches at Bryn Mawr College. Skirkanich’s air quality
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Growing up in Philadelphia, Marcus Greene Sr. says his family struggled to buy groceries. Even with food stamps and other government assistance, it still wasn’t enough. “I specifically remember as a youth, standing in line on Lehigh Avenue, waiting with the rest of the community to get our food donations,” says Greene, now vice convener
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Being a mother is hard under the best of circumstances — now imagine caring for a toddler alone in the forest during an apocalypse set off by extreme flooding. That’s the arduous task Liv Vela takes on as she tries to survive in the wilderness of a futuristic United States with her 3-year-old son Milo
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As a child, Jerome Shabazz saw his father transform a vacant lot into a neighborhood garden that produced enough fresh fruit and vegetables to feed their whole North Philadelphia block. “It was just incredible,” says Shabazz, now the executive director of Overbrook Environmental Education Center, located at 6134 Lancaster Avenue in West Philly. Through his
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When West Philadelphia mechanic Wayne Fleishman has to repair a computer-related issue on a vehicle, he often finds himself reaching out to the manufacturer for more information. After all, newer models have more than a dozen computer systems helping control everything from the tires to the lane departure warning. Dealerships sell repair information digitally to
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What’s the size of a toaster and uses three times the energy of an average Pennsylvania household? That would be a cryptocurrency mining machine — a computer that runs 24/7 and spits out numbers in an attempt to solve complex problems, creating proof-of-work cryptocurrency, like Bitcoin, as a result. “We have companies that have 80,000
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