John Fischer's Philadelphia
Vol. 1 - Number 53 - 11/08/99
Well, as you probably noticed I took a couple of weeks off following my trip out west. Actually I was doing some catch-up work on some other areas of this site and my Hawaii for Visitors site following our extended trip out west.
A lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. We have a new mayor in Philadelphia. In what everyone expected would be a close election John Street defeated Sam Katz by the slimmest of margains. It willl not be an easy task to follow the success of Ed Rendell and John Street has some serious challenges ahead of him.
Speaking of those challenges, I picked up a copy of the new Places Rated Almanac 2000 which looks at North America's 354 major metropolitan areas. If you'd like to see how the Philadelphia area stacks up against the other metropolitan areas, check out this week's feature article on this site, "Where Philly Ranks". You'll see that in some significant areas the new mayor will be facing some serious issues that he and City Council will need to address as we enter the new millennium.
In what was not a totally unexpected announcement, the Mummers have voted to move from Broad Street to Market Street for their 100th anniversary parade on January 1, 2000. The Mummers previously marched on Market Street in 1995 due to construction on Broad Street. It now appears that the move may be permanent.
By a vote of 3-1 (with the Comics Association opposed) the Mummers associations are hoping that a shorter parade route and the attraction and central location of Market Street will bring out larger crowds. Crowds along the traditional Broad Street route have diminished over recent years.
The parade route will be shortened from 2.5 miles to about 9 blocks running from Fifth and Market Streets to City Hall.
I don't know about you but I've just about had it with the construction in I-95 South. If the repairs at Penn's Landing were not enough, on Saturday there was also work being done under the Walt Whitman Bridge overpass. This is the second Saturday in a row for that construction.
I was driving back to Delaware County from Mt. Laurel, New Jersey on Saturday and it took me an hour and a half for what is normally about a 45 minute drive.
The bad news is that construction will soon switch from the southbound to the northbound lanes where I'll have to battle it every morning on my way to work. As those who know me can tell you, I'm not all that patient and happy in the mornings in the best of circumstances. Oh well ...
Well, that's my spin on things. What's yours? You can join me in our chat room almost every evening - Philly Chat - or drop me a note at philadelphia.guide@about.com. Also, be sure to check out our new Philadelphia Forum where you can share your comments and feelings, ask questions, post classifieds and much more
If you missed any of our recent columns you can still catch them:
Western Diary
10/1/99 - 10/15/99
John Fischer's Philadelphia 10/25/99
