On August 19, 2019, Matthew George decided he had enough of the litter lining Germantown’s streets. He created a GoFundMe campaign for a trash-can program he called “I ♥ Thy Hood.” He reached out to his neighbors in the hopes that he could raise enough money to buy 10 44-gallon trash cans for the neighborhood.
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Although the Free Library of Philadelphia is currently closed amidst COVID-19, one unconventional library is open to the public this summer: the Quarantine Public Library. In May of this year, Katie Garth, an artist based in Philadelphia, and Tracy Honn, a printing history educator based in Madison Wisconsin, began to brainstorm their idea for a
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When costume designer Heidi Barr looks out the window of her Wissahickon home, she doesn’t see rowhouses, paved streets, parked cars and tidy front yards. Instead, she envisions the Northwest Philly neighborhood as it would have looked 200 years ago, when lush fields dotted with farmhouses sloped toward the banks of the Schuylkill River. Back
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Photograph courtesy of Unsplash.com By Nicolas Esposito Our City Sanitation system is broken. It was broken before Covid-19 and the cracks are now beginning to give way to a full breakdown of the system due to the pandemic as both trash and recycling pickups are consistently delayed. The reason my former office, the City’s Zero
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Black is Beautiful collaboration cans. Photograph courtesy of Two Locals Brewing By Jaclyn Zeal While the craft beer renaissance has generated an uptick in breweries throughout Philadelphia (with as many as 16 new breweries opening in 2019 alone), Rich and Mengistu Koilor are on a mission to add to the city’s thriving beer scene by
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Photography by Milton Lindsay Cutting Edge By Siobhan Gleason When Greg Fuguet looks at a piece of storm-damaged lumber, he can already picture what shape it will take in its next life as a piece of art. After years of woodworking, Fuguet has developed his observational skills. He can determine how a tree will need
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If you can keep your cynicism in check, corporate displays of support for Black Lives Matter can seem admirable, sometimes even moving. When done authentically, companies are holding a mirror to themselves, deciding that they are not doing enough to address racial injustice, and committing to make change. Some of these vows are genuine and
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Photograph courtesy of Unspalsh.com Meat your Maker By: Siobhan Gleason JBS meatpacking worker Carmen Dominguez is concerned about her co-workers’ health during COVID-19. Her colleagues Wilbert Rivera and Enock Benjamin died from COVID-19 this April after 19 workers at the Souderton, Pennsylvania plant tested positive for the virus. Dominguez felt it was important to speak
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I don’t think i would have noticed that the patch of forest off Livesey Lane had been restored if Steve Jones, president of Wissahickon Restoration Volunteers (WRV), hadn’t told me. I visited the area on a humid morning in late May. The canopy was complete, shading out the sun completely. I heard the usual forest
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Photograph courtesy of Netflix By Francesca Furey If you’ve been binging Netflix shows while social distancing at home, you might’ve come across Queer Eye’s 5th season — based right here in Philadelphia. The Fab Five spruced up the lives of 10 inspiring Philadelphians, including 19-year-old Abby Leedy, a staff organizer at the Sunrise Movement. The
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