Author: Christopher Wink

Tony Lain is dead: excerpt

There is a suddenness to life in this city.

Surely it is exaggerated in the minds of those who live mostly in fears of their own creation. Four hundred dead of 1.5 million isn’t anything to the pain and poverty of many in this world, but murders on the streets of Philadelphia require a viciousness that can’t possibly come naturally.

The stories come and seem to portray great tragedies in their crushing art.

Tony Lain was a 42-year-old married father of two from Mayfair, a neighborhood of runaways from the gritty, urban decay of Kensington’s old Irish Catholic blocks.

This is a short excerpt. To read the rest of this piece and other writing, go here.

I am currently traveling. This was forward-posted on May 6.

Philly.com gets new Web site redesign

philly-com.JPG

Philly.com – the online home of the Inquirer and the Daily News – launched a new redesign last week.

Our man Daniel McQuade of Philadelphia Weekly’s Will Do blog has some thoughts.

Well, well! Philly.com went a redesigned and… well, they got rid of the changing front page via Javascript, so the redesign is an immediate success in one area. Reader Christopher emails: “The site has totally gone retro 80’s pastel with geometric shapes and magic marker headlines. Feels like Miami Vice.” That kind of feels right, though — remember, this is a company that pays both Michael Smerconish and Christine Flowers, who must turn in their columns in magic marker.

My friend Chris Reber says it “looks good, but isn’t that the same design as Stereogum?”

More...

No surprise the comments on the redesign’s announcement are full of hating.

Your kidding me right… did you have the website redesigned and outsourced in India? It looks like a 12 year old without any perception and or understanding of color theory or interface usability built this site. And what is up with your header and that bouncing “philly.com” logo? And for the love of god whahy did you use a beige textured wallpaper in your background it look very 1996ish. One word comes to mind “FAIL”!

Of course, that is fairly excessive. Agreed, it doesn’t scream professionalism or the Internet home of the third oldest daily newspaper in the country, but then, the two newspapers’ individual pages are more traditional. The Daily News didn’t change at all – from what I can see – and the Inquirer didn’t change much, though, to be honest, what changes they made seem to be a step backwards. No dominant image and no displaying other new media. Three columns and I am drawn more to their left-most advertising than their content.

The Temple News: An open letter to President Ann Weaver Hart

My final column after four years writing for The Temple News:

An open letter to President Ann Weaver Hart

By Christopher Wink | May 12, 2008 | The Temple News

I am graduating. After four years on North Broad Street – two more than you – I have plenty I want to share with you. Space is limited, so forgive my suddenness.

Throw your students into the surrounding communities.

For 45 years, this university has tried to figure out how to trick middle-class students into studying amid one of this country’s densest collections of black people, many of them poor and uneducated. So we built walls and took publicity shots facing south. We closed North Park Avenue, tried to close 13th Street and turned inward.

So, each year, a portion of accepted students confuse Temple with shootings at the Norris Apartments and confuse Philadelphia with an abandoned row home at 20th and Diamond streets.

That’s backwards. Have Provost Lisa Staiano-Coico amend our new general education requirements to involve 10-credit hours of “community education.” The engineering students can take a class on the most efficient means of backfilling condemned buildings, architecture students can figure out what’s wrong with the North Philadelphia subway stop, and students of the social sciences can work with the nonprofits that are trying to help our neighbors.

Leverage our intellectual capital and market it as the most unique academic experience in the world.

Continue reading The Temple News: An open letter to President Ann Weaver Hart

I'm road tripping in South Dakota, but I'll keep this popping

TODAY I AM LEAVING TOWN in a Subaru. An older friend and I are headed to White River, South Dakota (Google Maps), just north of the Rosebud Lakota Reservation, to which I’ve gone each of the past two years, including an initial trip with a Temple University service group.

We’ll do some community work, meet with friends, learn and I’ll be sure to clear my head.

I am done with my college career and have my graduation looming.

Indeed, I am returning on May 21, the day before I am set to graduate. Asking for trouble, I know. We’ll see.

Anyway, don’t you worry. This baby will keep cooking, as I’ve forward posted lots of stuff I have been meaning to get up here. What you can be sure of is that it won’t be on anything breaking.

Be well and good thoughts.

Rae Scott Jones: helping St. Joseph's keep up with the Scott-Joneses

As filed – without edits – for yesterday’s edition of the Philadelphia Business Journal.

WHAT YOU WANT TO SEE are students in the supermarkets.

That’s a healthy level of community involvement Rae Scott-Jones might tell you.

Scott-Jones, who was named assistant vice president for government and community relations at St. Joseph’s University, has lived in the school’s Wynnefield neighborhood for nearly a quarter century.

“I want more students in the community. I think that’s important because we all live here. The more we interact the more we are likely to get along and develop some understanding. We are less likely to antagonize individuals than groups,” she said. “We live and work here. It’s critical that we live and work here together.”

Continue reading Rae Scott Jones: helping St. Joseph's keep up with the Scott-Joneses

Philadelphia police beating is not as bad as Rodney King

You’ve heard it by now.

Fox 29 captured an 11-minute video following a Philadelphia police chase that ended with officers punching and kicking three men, suspected of a drive-by shooting minutes prior.

In case you’re smart enough to avoid cable news, you might not realize that the story is being recycled again and again each news hour with new perspectives with the same information. Here’s the footage discussed with a New York City lawyer on CNN.

Continue reading Philadelphia police beating is not as bad as Rodney King

The Sons of Ben: Philadelphia soccer fans benefiting Chester

As filed – without edits – for today’s edition of the Philadelphia Business Journal.

BRINGING A PROFESSIONAL SOCCER TEAM to Chester may have little to do with bringing professional soccer to Chester.

In February, Philadelphia was officially granted Major League Soccer’s 16th franchise, to be played in a 20,000-seat, soccer-specific stadium that is leading a major waterfront renovation in Chester. The Sons of Ben, a group of soccer fans eager for Philadelphia to join the growing league that formed in January 2007, led the excitement that surrounded speculation preceding the announcement. Now that their mission to bring the world sport to the city has been completed, they’ve taken to bettering the community of 36,000 that will house their still unnamed Philadelphia soccer franchise.

“Once it was announced that the stadium would be in Chester and the funding would be all set, we reached out for a way to get involved,” said Bryan James, Sons of Ben president and founding member.

Continue reading The Sons of Ben: Philadelphia soccer fans benefiting Chester