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#142 March 2021/All Topics/Bicycling/transportation

Why do loud objectors have so much power over whether bike lanes are installed?

Over the last few years, the two-way protected bike lane on 11th Street has provided a safer route for thousands of people who commute and run errands in South Philadelphia every day. It’s become such an important route for cyclists, in fact, the city now plows the lane when it snows. But it nearly didn’t

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March 25, 2021
3 mins read
#142 March 2021/All Topics/Food/Shop Local

Plant-based menu items are becoming a staple on more Philly restaurant menus

According to Ashley Roberts, eating out as a vegan in Philadelphia is easy. Why? Because so many restaurants offer vegan options. “I feel like you can go into pretty much any restaurant and they can accommodate you in some way,” says Roberts. She describes the contrast between Philadelphia restaurants and the venues she frequents when

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March 22, 2021
6 mins read
#142 March 2021/All Topics/Environment/Urban Nature/Water

Photography project shines a light on how city beavers work and play

Of course the toothy mascot on Chris Muller’s bright orange cap is a beaver. “Oregon State,” he explains. I should have known. We are meeting up on Martin Luther King Jr. Drive at the Fairmount Dam, where we could talk while admiring the view—not of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Fairmount Water Works or

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March 20, 2021
3 mins read
All Topics/Politics/Race and Equity

Can gun buybacks help curb our city’s violence problem? Here’s a look behind how they work in Philadelphia.

Within the first three months of 2021, Philadelphia has recorded more than 100 homicides—a figure up 32% as of this same time last year. The city has also seen almost 400 shootings. The majority of people being shot are young, Black men—85% of Philly’s gun violence victims are Black and 60% are under the age

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March 19, 2021
4 mins read
#142 March 2021/All Topics/Community/Editor's Notes

Editor’s Notes: No Comment

On February 1, The Philadelphia Inquirer put a stop to reader comments on the majority of its online articles. They will continue to provide a public forum for sports stories, so feel free to share your opinion on the departure of Carson Wentz, but you can’t comment on the news. Some Inquirer posters bemoaned the

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March 18, 2021
2 mins read
#142 March 2021/Air/All Topics/Environment/Environmental Justice/Race and Equity

Nicetown neighbors monitor air quality in anticipation of the pollution SEPTA’s natural gas plant will bring

In November 2019 the City of Philadelphia approved SEPTA’s request to operate a natural gas–burning power plant in the Nicetown neighborhood of North Philadelphia. This approval marked a defeat for the neighbors opposing the plant, who are now preparing for the next phase in the struggle: taking oversight of the new plant’s emissions into their

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March 15, 2021
5 mins read
#142 March 2021/All Topics/Food/Shop Local

Queer-owned vegan pierogi business was started by two friends mid-pandemic

As professionals in the hospitality industry, caring for others is important to longtime friends Stephen Pressman and Heather Gettis. When the pandemic hit and both were laid off from their jobs, restaurant worker Pressman and event manager Gettis found themselves with an abundance of time and a lack of opportunity to do things for others.

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March 13, 2021
2 mins read
All Topics/Politics/Public Health

A small business owner’s take on why it’s time for a single payer system

Imagine a world without co-pays, deductibles, premiums, explanations of benefits, pre-existing conditions, tiers, in-network and out-of-network providers.  I talked to two capitalists the other day. One in favor of Medicare for all. One on the fence. I initially wanted to talk to small businesses in Philadelphia about Medicare For All and their challenges with our

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March 11, 2021
3 mins read
#142 March 2021/All Topics/gardening/Shop Local

Costa Rica native turned West Philly resident digs into sustainable landscaping

Luna Lemus-Bromley doesn’t mind getting a little dirt under her fingernails. In fact, that’s what Lemus-Bromley loves so much about gardening. She appreciates that while the end result is beautiful, the road to getting there can be tough. That’s why she named her gardening business Petal and Blade—to signify the time and effort it takes

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March 10, 2021
4 mins read
#142 March 2021/All Topics/Feminism/Race and Equity

Dear Lois, How does the Capitol riot reflect how people live at home?

When we live in a world where we feel we can do whatever we want, whenever we want, we succumb to a spiritual plague. It erodes the fabric of cooperation and equality, as well as the symbiosis that allows for us to have safe, healthy living environments. When we look at those trying to dismantle

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March 8, 2021
3 mins read
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Germantown Kitchen Garden’s farmer, Amanda Staples Germantown Kitchen Garden’s farmer, Amanda Staples, who hails from Upper Darby, did not grow up on a farm. Although her grandparents operated a Christmas tree farm near Clarks Summit, Lackawanna County, Staples’ initial hands-on contact with farming was growing lima beans in her backyard for an elementary school assignment.

After graduating from Temple University with a degree in religion, Staples moved to Kensington, where she first encountered community gardens popping up on vacant lots. A friend invited her to help at a community garden in Camden, and that experience inspired Staples to mobilize volunteers and build a garden near her Kensington home. She nurtured the garden while earning money from customer service jobs at Philadelphia International Airport, Wawa and the Franklin Institute. Eventually, Staples committed to an internship at Scarecrow Hill Farm in Lancaster County. “Everything you did there was about farming. It was by far the most intensive learning experience,” she recalls. Her aspirations to become a production farmer started taking shape.

Buying a half-acre plot in Kensington proved impossible. Then something unexpected happened. An acquaintance was purchasing a home in Germantown, but the seller made the deal contingent on buying the adjacent parcel. It was a forest of neglect, so overgrown it was impenetrable. But it was affordable and available. Staples and her husband bought it in 2008. “It didn’t feel that risky,” she says. “It felt crazy, but not risky.”

Founded on her conviction that farms should exist in cities, Staples began to build Germantown Kitchen Garden as the “hybrid homestead and tiny business” she envisioned.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Marilyn Anthony
📸 Kristen Harrison

#philadelphia #communitygarden #urbanfarm #growyourownfood #homegrowntomatoes
A 1970s-era stereo receiver. Red leather boots. Ni A 1970s-era stereo receiver. Red leather boots. Nine fully intact eggplants.

These are just a few of the unexpected objects the Cobbs Creek Ambassadors have come across while cleaning up Cobbs Creek Park in West Philadelphia.

But most of what they pick up is just typical litter: bottles, cans, food wrappers, old tires. And the volunteers behind this grassroots organization have picked up tons of it — an average of about 9.5 tons of trash each year, in fact — since starting up in 2018.

Cobbs Creek Ambassadors was co-founded by Rich Guffanti and Andrew Wheeler, acquaintances who first volunteered together building a wall in the Spruce Hill Bird Sanctuary. They enjoyed each other’s company and volunteered again as a duo to clear gutter leaves along Cobbs Creek Park between Catherine and Christian streets. This effort became a regular meet-up.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Emily Kovach
📸 Tracie Van Auken

#philadelphia #urbannature #parkcleanup #phillyparks #cobbscreek
Last year I wrote a series of columns in Grid abou Last year I wrote a series of columns in Grid about several ways the City of Philadelphia could expand composting. While I have had some productive conversations with City officials over the last year, I have seen no indication that they are prepared to begin any large scale residential composting pilot program in the near future. But that doesn’t mean we should throw up our hands and give up. Composting is something an individual can do to reduce their carbon impact. And while a paid composting service, like the one provided by Bennett Compost, works for some, it doesn’t meet everyone’s needs.

That is why we want to make sure we are educating people about the benefits of composting. In the coming months, while we wait for the City to incorporate composting into the municipal waste services I will lay out some practical ways people can set up their own composting systems.

So what do you need to compost the right way?

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Tim Bennett
📸 Photo courtesy of Delpixart

#philadelphia #compost #composting #foodwaste #zerowaste
Events happening in and around Philadelphia this w Events happening in and around Philadelphia this weekend!

➡️ Pennypack Creek and Park Cleanup: Join us for a morning of community action followed by an afternoon of celebration! We’re coming together to make our park and creek cleaner and more welcoming for everyone. Whether you’re a longtime neighbor, a first-time volunteer, or bringing the whole family, this event is for anyone who wants to make a positive impact on our shared green spaces.

When:
Saturday, March 21st (10:00 AM - 11:30 AM)

Where:
Pennypack on the Delaware Park
7801 State Road
Philadelphia, PA 19136

➡️ A DEEPLY ROOTED TROLLEY TOUR BY HARRIETTS BOOKSHOP: Welcome to A DEEPLY ROOTED TROLLEY TOUR by Harriett’s Bookshop! A DEEPLY ROOTED Trolley Tour is our three hour, hop on-hop off tour that celebrates local culture, history, music, and deeply rooted tradition by visiting new and seasoned spaces throughout Philadelphia.

When:
Saturday, March 21st (3:00 PM - 5:30 PM)

Where:
Harriett’s Bookshop
258 East Girard Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19125

➡️ Dyeing with Plants Spring Workshop: Learn to make colorful dyes for your next fabric- or egg-dyeing project from common plants you can find during your next hike or trip to the grocery store! Design and dye one yard of fabric using the batik technique and natural dyes. If you finish early, try your new skills on smaller, egg canvases.

When:
Sunday, March 22nd (1:00 PM - 2:30 PM)

Where:
Tyler Arboretum
515 Painter Road
Media, PA 19063

#philadelphia #philly #phillysupportphilly #eventsinphilly #phillyevents
Opening with subterranean footage of the foam cups Opening with subterranean footage of the foam cups, plastic bottles and sodden cardboard that decorate the sewer inlets underneath Philadelphia, filmmaker Melissa Langer’s 2025 documentary, “In Excess,” probes into the unseen places where the city’s litter ends up. Spoiler alert: When it comes to the city’s trash, there is no throwing it “away.”

“Every object we discard lives on somewhere else, disturbing someone else’s environment, forever,” says Langer. Langer, who moved to Philadelphia in 2017, immediately noticed disproportionate amounts of litter and illegal dumping in Northeast Philly and began exploring what the City was doing about it.

The product is her 70-minute feature, which weaves haunting stretches of trash footage with candid vignettes of the people tasked with cleaning it up, from Philadelphia Water Department (PWD) sewer inlet crews to a small Streets Department team that monitors hundreds of security cameras for illegal dumping.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Julia Lowe
📸 Melissa Langer

#philadelphia #waste #wastemanagement #wastedisposal #illegaldumping #litter
Hanna Kahler lives in West Philadelphia and rides Hanna Kahler lives in West Philadelphia and rides her blue commuter bicycle to work in the Graduate Hospital neighborhood, a trip she says takes 18 minutes via the Schuylkill River Trail and parking-protected bike lanes on Walnut and Chestnut streets.

When she spoke to Grid on Feb. 12, more than two weeks after the last snowflakes of the Jan. 25 winter storm fell, she was still unable to ride to work. She could take SEPTA’s 40 bus. “If it works well, it takes 40 minutes, but it hasn’t been working well,” she says. Mostly she’s been walking, which takes 47 minutes. “The City has completely dropped the ball on maintaining the bike lanes,” Kahler says.

The snow that fell directly onto the bike lanes and that the City did not clear wasn’t the only challenge. “Ignoring it is bad enough, but they’ve shoved piles of snow into the bike lanes,” Kahler says, referring to heaps — some as big as an SUV — that City workers clearing the roads had plowed into the bike lanes at intersections.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Bernard Brown
📸 Tracie Van Auken

#philadelphia #bikelane #safestreets #bikesafety #bicyclesafety #bikephl
At 11 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, Aspen Simone stood At 11 a.m. on Valentine’s Day, Aspen Simone stood on the corner of 7th and Christian streets in South Philadelphia holding a long dowel with a laminated, cutout pigeon on the end.

That wasn’t just any pigeon on the end of Simone’s walk leader staff. Primrose the pigeon is how the whole pigeon education enterprise began. Simone’s partner Hannah Michelle Brower took Primrose — at that point a weak, malnourished fledgling found by a neighbor on the sidewalk — to a pigeon rescuer who nursed the young bird back to health. Simone says the rescuer told them the recuperating pigeon, whom Brower had taken to calling Primrose, would do better as a pet rather than being released into the wild, and so the couple kept her.

“We just started learning more about her as an individual,” Simone says. “And then we started learning more about pigeon biology and behavior generally. One day, we realized we could predict what pigeons were about to do based on subtle cues that we can read now.” In the summer of 2025, the couple launched their pigeon tours, priced at $25, to share what they had learned.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Bernard Brown
📸 Troy Bynum

#philadelphia #birding #birdwatching #pigeonlove #dovelove #urbanwildlife
The overgrown lot at 5308 Parrish St. in the Haddi The overgrown lot at 5308 Parrish St. in the Haddington neighborhood of West Philadelphia is getting back to its roots. After sitting abandoned, accumulating trash, construction debris and dumped car parts for over a decade, a new project is in progress to restore the space to a new iteration of its past life as a neat, blooming garden.

Nathan McWilliams, however, who has been pruning back invasive species like mulberry and tree of heaven since September, believes it is already an oasis.

“It has so much potential. And I just want to bring that garden back to its glory,” says McWilliams, owner and lead consultant at Tree In Me, LLC.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Julia Lowe
📸 Photo courtesy of Nathan McWilliams

#philadelphia #communitygarden #gardencare #gardenmaintenance #urbangreenspace #urbannature
Events happening in and around Philadelphia this w Events happening in and around Philadelphia this weekend!

➡️ 2026 Philadelphia Bike Expo: The Philly Bike Expo is an annual weekend-long event featuring exhibitors, seminars, presentations and events representing the spectrum of cycling.

When:
Saturday, March 14th (10:00 AM - 5:00 PM) - Sunday, March 15th (10:00 AM - 4:00 PM)

Where:
Pennsylvania Convention Center
1101 Arch Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107

➡️ Philly Pigeon Tour: Join us on our Italian Market Pigeon Tour. Your expert pigeon guide will bring you through the historic market and visit nearby established pigeon flocks. You’ll also get to see the market pigeons nesting in old buildings and braving traffic with confidence.

When:
Saturday, March 14th (11:00 AM - 12:30 PM)

Where:
Get A Gato
638 Christian Street
Philadelphia, PA 19147

➡️ Tree House Book Swap: Tree House Books is hosting seasonal book swaps this year! Bring your friends, family, kids, friend’s kids, kid’s kids and some books to swap! Don’t forget a tote bag, too, to carry all your new reads.

When:
Saturday, March 14th (2:00 PM - 5:00 PM)

Where:
North Philly Peace Park
2226 W. Jefferson Street
Philadelphia, PA 19121

#philadelphia #philly #phillysupportphilly #eventsinphilly #phillyevents #phillyevent #philadelphiaevents
For Ana, 19, of Brazil, and Jonathan, 17, of Guate For Ana, 19, of Brazil, and Jonathan, 17, of Guatemala, the southern border of the United States marks the line between life and death. Ana and Jonathan, both clients of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society of Pennsylvania (HIAS PA), a local humanitarian nonprofit that provides legal services to low-income immigrants in the state, now live in Philadelphia — but with looming uncertainty.

Ana’s journey began in 2019. Her mother wanted to reunite with Ana’s father, who had left Brazil for Philadelphia a few years earlier for work. Hard-pressed for money, Ana’s mother applied for visas and was denied. Instead of taking the U.S. government’s no for an answer, she hired a “coyote,” or guide, to smuggle her and Ana into America. Despite a difficult relationship with her parents, Ana, then 12, had no choice but to accompany her mother.

For Jonathan, gang violence and death threats forced him to leave his homeland. His mother, already living in Philadelphia, was unable to obtain a visa for him and hired a coyote to take him across the border in 2024.

Thus, Ana and Jonathan arrived without legal documents. They’re hardly alone in that status. Save The Children, a global nonprofit that works to improve the lives of children, reported that in 2022, the “Department of Health and Human Services received a record 128,904 unaccompanied, undocumented minors, up from 122,731 in the prior year.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Constance Garcia-Barrio
📸 Tracie Van Auken

#philadelphia #immigration #immigrantstories #immigrantrights #immigrationlaw #immigrationlawyer
It’s not easy to get to the Lankenau Environmental It’s not easy to get to the Lankenau Environmental Science Magnet High School. The school sits on 17 acres at the northwest border of Philadelphia, a pocket of land not served by SEPTA, forcing the district to bus students to and from school. In exchange for the long ride, however, students learn in an expansive outdoor classroom — the neighboring Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education has served as an extension of the grounds since Lankenau became an environmental magnet school in 2005. If the School District of Philadelphia is to be believed, students will be better served by Lankenau closing and having its programs merged into Walter B. Saul High School. (The original plan to merge the school with Roxborough High School was changed.) 

But “Don’t Sell Lankenau Environmental” was spelled out in bright yellow letters on the T-shirts worn by Lankenau students and teachers at a Feb. 4 open house and community listening session, addressing what they believe is the real reason the district proposes to close the school and send its students to another school.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Bernard Brown
📸 Chris Baker Evens

#philadelphia #environmentaleducation #environmentalscience #environmentaleducation #educationmatters #magnetschool
For roughly 20% of Americans who ride public trans For roughly 20% of Americans who ride public transportation, the Transit app is their guide. Displaying nearby routes and mapping step-by-step transit directions, it also asks users to give feedback on their rides.

But for SEPTA riders, their responses to Transit’s in-app questions about station and vehicle conditions during a trip and overall satisfaction at its completion aren’t seen by the transportation authority. That’s because SEPTA does not subscribe to Terminal, Transit’s customer experience platform.

Rather, it relies on its own methods to acquire customer feedback.

The agency conducts a quarterly customer satisfaction survey, which asks riders to rate cleanliness, safety, reliability and other aspects of the system.

“We are super focused on those numbers right now,” says Lex Powers, chief officer of customer experience. “It’s a whole rallying cry in the agency to improve these scores. And over the past year or two, for the most part, they have gone up.”

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Gabriel Donahue
📸 Photo courtesy of Alga Serba

#philadelphia #septa #septaphilly #iseptaphilly #publictransit #publictransportation
Events happening in and around Philadelphia this w Events happening in and around Philadelphia this weekend!

➡️ Philly Homegrown First Fridays: Each month, we open our doors for an evening of local love: shop unique, handcrafted goods, meet the makers, and connect with your neighbors. Enjoy complimentary wine, light refreshments, and a vibrant atmosphere where art, plants, and people come together.

When:
Friday, March 6th (6:00 PM - 9:00 PM)

Where:
Plant and People
3952 Lancaster Avenue
Philadelphia, PA 19104

➡️ Birding with Philly Queer Birders: It’s been a long winter, so come shake off the cold with queer community and #birdjoy! Join Philly Queer Birders and Audubon Mid-Atlantic as we check out early spring visitors, and perhaps some surprises along the way.

When:
Saturday, March 7th (9:00 AM - 11:00 AM)

Where:
The Discovery Center
3401 Reservoir Drive
Philadelphia, PA 19121

➡️ A Journey to Backyard Biodiversity: How do you transform a tangled mess of a backyard and a traditional lawn and into a thriving wildlife oasis? Join native gardening enthusiast Katie Fisk as she shares how she used native plants to turn her own yard into a haven for pollinators and birds.

When:
Saturday, March 7th (10:00 AM - 11:00 AM)

Where:
Jenkins Arboretum & Gardens
631 Berwyn Baptist Road
Devon, PA 19333

#philadelphia #philly #phillysupportphilly #eventsinphilly #phillyevents #phillyevent #philadelphiaevents
Across the nation, more and more youth are reachin Across the nation, more and more youth are reaching for a bicycle for recreation and as a means of transportation. In fact, the advocacy group PeopleforBikes found in a 2024 survey that ridership for children ages 3 to 17 increased from 46% to 56%, reversing a decline. And on March 14 and 15 at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the 15th Philadelphia Bike Expo (PBE) is working to instill cycling confidence in young people with its Kids Arena, aiming to build on that upward trend.

The kids riding arena features separated courses with skill and safety stations for a full range of experience levels. The program will be overseen by Sam Pearson, a lifelong cyclist and the Healthy Communities program manager at Pennsylvania Downtown Center. “It’s a skills course,” Pearson says. “We’re trying to get them to show how well they follow the signs and interact with each other as they’re circulating.”

The course “road,” as in years past, is halved by a center line, and riders must navigate cones and each other. There is also a roundabout where riders have to obey traffic signs, take turns and decide when to go straight or proceed around the traffic circle, Pearson says. There will be separate stations for riders to focus on a specific skill, and others where they must combine those skills in practice.

Pearson says there are numerous benefits to these kinds of courses, called traffic gardens. Beyond balance work, she says children can work on gliding, braking, staying in their lane and responding to road signs.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Dawn Kane
📸 Photo courtesy of Diana Steif

#philadelphia #safestreets #bikesafety #bicyclesafety #phillybikeexpo #bikephl
Amanda Parezo isn’t your typical bike lane advocat Amanda Parezo isn’t your typical bike lane advocate. For one thing, she doesn’t ride a bike.

Parezo once loved cycling around Philadelphia. But in 2021, after a game of kickball at Hancock Playground in East Kensington, she was struck in the back by a stray bullet and paralyzed from the waist down. Now, she gets around town using a wheelchair. She rolls from her condo in Old City to her job at Thomas Jefferson University, where she teaches occupational therapy. In a city where sidewalks are often damaged or blocked, Parezo often ends up rolling into a bike lane.

But bike lanes, she says, often aren’t free of barriers either. When a vehicle is stopped or parked in the lane, Parezo has to roll into the street, greatly increasing her risk of injury. “I feel like something’s going to happen as soon as I get into the street,” she says. “If it’s nighttime, that makes it exponentially worse, and then I just won’t go out because I’m scared. I’ll just stay home.”

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ + 📸 Jordan Teicher

#philadelphia #visionzero #safestreets #accessibilitymatters #accessibilityforall #bikelane
By all accounts, 67-year-old Harry Fenton was a mo By all accounts, 67-year-old Harry Fenton was a model of safe cycling.

He used hand signals when he was turning and stopped at every stop sign and red light, even when there wasn’t a car anywhere in sight. To be visible, he wore fluorescent jackets, vests and shirts, and he never left the house without his helmet or fully-charged lights. He found routes that felt safe and then stuck to them.

Fenton, in other words, did everything right. But he couldn’t prevent what happened to him on the morning of Sept. 2 while he was riding his bike in Fairmount Park. At the intersection of Belmont Avenue and Avenue of the Republic, a speeding driver struck him and fled. Fenton was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, making him the fourth cyclist killed in Philadelphia last year, and the eighth person killed in a crash on Belmont Avenue in the past six years.

Belmont Avenue has been part of Philadelphia’s “High Injury Network” — the 12% of roads that are responsible for 80% of the city’s total fatal and serious road injuries — for years. So why have the dangerous conditions there remained unaddressed? The answer is linked to the nearly decade-long history of Vision Zero, the City’s safe streets initiative.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ + 📸 Jordan Teicher

#philadelphia #visionzero #safestreets #bikesafety #bicyclesafety #bikephl
New issue alert! Grid 202 has arrived and with it New issue alert! Grid 202 has arrived and with it comes another set of important stories to tell. Here are just a few of the ones you’ll find in this month’s pages:

• The efforts to eradicate traffic deaths in Philadelphia launched in 2016. Ten years in, the City is still far from its goal

• Could Philadelphia’s environmental science high school be for sale?

• For some undocumented minors living in Philadelphia, making it to the United States is just one step in a long journey to safety and security

➡️ Read the full issue now at gridphilly.com

📸 Cover photo by Jordan Teicher

#philadelphia #phillynews #sustainability #sustainableliving #environmentalnews #independentjournalism
📱 Shortly before my 24th birthday, I decided to re 📱 Shortly before my 24th birthday, I decided to replace my iPhone with a flip phone. I have abstractly considered making the change on numerous occasions, tired of the Internet following me around everywhere I go, always on the verge of being mindlessly lured to it.

During the short portion of my life when the Internet was stationary, I spent a lot of time sitting at the family computer. I was jealous of my older sister when she got a cellphone. I begged my parents for an iPod Touch, making do for a while with a hand-me-down Samsung that wasn’t connected to a phone number and only worked on WiFi. When I finally got a smartphone in eighth grade, I was congratulated.

Yet after a decade of smartphone ownership, I’m unsatisfied. It hasn’t improved my life, it’s made it worse. How much time has been lost to a bottomless feed? How often have I gone to check the weather, but instead open Twitter, browse for ten minutes before ripping myself away and locking the screen, only to return to my physical surroundings and realize that I still don’t know the forecast?

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Gabriel Donahue

#philadelphia #technology #smartphones #digitaldetox #flipphone #offline
🏞️ The Fairmount Park Conservancy, Philadelphia’s 🏞️ The Fairmount Park Conservancy, Philadelphia’s largest parks-focused nonprofit, has tread perilous ground over the past several years as it leads one of the largest open space transformations in the city’s recent history: a $250 million overhaul of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (FDR) Park in South Philadelphia. The conservancy has caught flak from some community and advocacy groups that are critical of elements of the plan. As reported in Grid #187, it is just the latest chapter in a long history of controversy over public park management in Philadelphia dating back to colonial times.

Despite these circumstances, Anthony Sorrentino, who became chief executive officer of the conservancy in October, is taking a decidedly optimistic — and open — approach to the job. Even before his first day, Sorrentino was waxing poetic and engaging in conversation about Philadelphia’s park system in a LinkedIn post. During an interview with Grid at the conservancy’s West Fairmount Park offices in November 2025, Sorrentino opened with an offer to “call me Tony” and said he planned to serve as a “happy warrior” for Philadelphia’s parks, boosting not only their physical quality but their profile in civic life.

“The conservancy is 28, going on 29 years of age, and has been going through its own growth spurts all that time, and I think it’s matured into an organization that’s kind of ready to be more than one or two things,” Sorrentino said, noting that it has traditionally served in a fundraising capacity. “There’s a moment for greater, lower-‘a’ advocacy. That might be the next level of maturity for the organization.”

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Kyle Bagenstose
📸 Albert Yee

#philadelphia #urbannature #urbanparks #phillyparks #fairmountpark #fdrpark
💍 Growing up, Maddy Hirsch wanted two things: to m 💍 Growing up, Maddy Hirsch wanted two things: to make useful things with her hands and to own her own business. Guided by those goals, she enrolled in Temple University’s entrepreneurial studies program, only to feel disillusioned with what she saw as its narrow focus on traditional and tech startups. She transferred to the Tyler School of Art & Architecture, but found it too centered on conceptual art.

“I wanted to understand how my work moves through the world on a very physical level,” Hirsch says. “I like making tangible things that people can interact with every day.”

Before dropping out of Tyler, she took a jewelry-making class that helped bring her path into focus. Here was a medium that blended art and craft and opened up a feasible avenue toward entrepreneurship.

“Making jewelry made perfect sense to me: It’s practical, fun and pretty,” Hirsch notes. “So in 2017, I started working for a jeweler in Philly, and I’ve been doing this ever since.”

After a few years working her way up — from running errands on Jewelers’ Row to setting diamonds at a hip-hop jewelry store on South Street — Hirsch opened her own brick-and-mortar shop, Tshatshke Jewelry Studio (Tshatshke is pronounced “CHOTCH-kee”) in Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood.

➡️ Read the full story at gridphilly.com

✍️ Emily Kovach
📸 Tracie Van Auken

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