<p>Billy Pilgram, you may have the two incidents somewhat confused.
The original event at the 7:00 pm showing at the Theater, involved a robbery attempt, when an off armed off duty cop shot several times in the crowded lobby. </p>
<p>Second incident which I posted, happened when a bar closed and the former Villanova Lacrosse team captain, started to lunge forward toward another patron, 3rd year Temple law student. Apparently, in self defense the law student, fired five bullets seriously injuring the recent Villanova grad.
**** I don’t know if he survived. </p>
<p>MOWC- I share your views, and thought you and others would enjoy this little tidbit in yesterday’s Phila Inquirer regarding Tasty Kake.</p>
<p>Philly food is all about transparency. You can see pretzels baked, cheesesteaks sizzled, and hoagies stuffed at countless stands, chips bagged at Herr’s, and - starting later this year - Peanut Butter TandyKakes and Butterscotch Krimpets being cloaked in carbo-liciousness at Tasty Baking.</p>
<p>After 96 years, Tasty will open its plant for public tours after it moves from Hunting Park Avenue to the Navy Yard in South Philly.</p>
<p>Billy Pilgrim: I sympathize with your feelings about the “mean girls” syndrome. I, too, have a hard time keeping my mouth shut in the face of being ganged up upon. From what I’ve seen, threads so often get derailed because of side issues involving one poster defending another. It’s a brave soul who is willing to speak his/her mind without the assurance of general approval!</p>
<p>Thanks, toneranger! (and teriwtt). And- SouthJersey, that is AWESOME. I will definitely go see that.</p>
<p>I have bashed Penn and the northeast on occasion. I was not at all thrilled with things my son’s freshman year- and the issues were not unique to him. I have chosen not to live in the northeast, so obviously I prefer other parts of the country. </p>
<p>My main point is to present a balance. I think parents (and kids) on this forum get stuck in believing that every single thing about the top 20 or so colleges on the various “lists” is just wonderful. That is not the case. This belief is part of why people are so devastated when they (or their kid) don’t get into the “dream school”. Penn is the dream school for many students. It is a wonderful school in many ways. Life will not stop if a student doesn’t get in and winds up at Lehigh or Rice or Emory. </p>
<p>When I made my original post it was right on the heels of learning that this shooting had occurred RIGHT at the intersection where my son lives. My son is always out and about- and I’m sure at all hours. I would have been equally as concerned if this had happened at my daughter’s grad school in Nashville. If you choose Penn, be prepared (as someone noted) that when you read the Daily Pennsylvanian you are likely to see a crime report. It’s just part of the deal.</p>
<p>mummom- You certainly do YOUR share of the ganging up and bashing, too.</p>
<p>MOWC: I have no connection with U Penn or Philladelphia, but I have appreciated your candor in speaking about your son’s experience at Penn. I think we’re all prone to trumpet our kids’ schools’ merits and downplay the shortcomings (I plead guilty.) No school is perfect, and it’s useful to hear a variety of viewpoints – positive, negative, and mixed.</p>
<p>MOWC’s dislike of “the northeast” – whatever that means in her view, since the northeast has many very different components-- is well known to anyone who has seen her posts in various forums over a period of time. Of course, it certainly is her right to prefer other parts of the country! </p>
<p>Re TastyKake, when I was a kid in southwestern CT–the NYC media market–I remember hearing ads for “TastyKake cakes and pies” on the radio. In fact, the end of the jingle is engrained in memory: it’s all on one note and then down a fifth on “pies.” I have a vague memory of the butterscotch cake, I think.</p>
<p>“If you choose Penn, be prepared (as someone noted) that when you read the Daily Pennsylvanian you are likely to see a crime report. It’s just part of the deal.”</p>
<p>I’d strongly encourage anyone with an interest in Penn to get their crime info directlly from the Daily Pennsylvania. Don’t rely on CC for balance.</p>
<p>wow…I hate the local news around here (Philly area). Don’t watch it. Always starts out with a murder or two. They really hype it too. </p>
<p>I’m also not fond of tastycakes although it may be cause I didn’t grow up around here. Now, back when I ate junky stuff, I just LOVED cheesteaks though. From the trucks. At Penn. Great stuff.</p>
<p>In general, I think reading the student newspapers gives a real clear view of what’s happening on campus. Crime. Drinking. A great resource and most are available online. They don’t tell you that stuff in the admissions sessions.</p>
<p>toneranger, when I went to school in eastern MA, we made fun of the Philly news because every day the lead story was a fire. We couldn’t figure out how there was anything left standing in Phila, because every day the lead story was something else burning down.</p>
<p>Now my S is at the same college. He texted me one night, he was actually watching the Philly news (which he almost never does). He said the lead story was a fire. The next story was a vigil for the victims of a fire the previous day. I think it might have been a candlelight vigil, which was just too ironic.</p>
<p>I’ve never been to Philly but in all fairness to the city it seems to me that if you listen to the news in any city of any size in any part of the country, there’s a fire or murder or shooting or bad accident…it is the news, no matter where I’ve been. For a while, my daughter as a high school student wouldn’t watch the news for that reason…she said it was too sad.</p>
<p>MOWC, have you been to Maine? It’s as northeast geographically as you can get, but doesn’t feel like “The Northeast” to me. I’m always happy to get back here after visiting Boston!</p>
<p>I would choose to live in Texas again if the average temperature dropped by about 20 degrees.</p>
<p>Actually, the reason we made fun of Philly and their daily fire stories was that I grew up outside NYC. Every day the news had to choose between the multiple murders that had occurred that day to report on, only the most sensational got covered. Fires were way down the list, only really big ones made the news.</p>
<p>I like Maine (except for it being too cold for me). I’ve been there a couple of times on business- my company has some plants there- and also to a Board meeting in Bar Harbor in 2008 except it was cold and rainy the whole time (August). We used to go to Vermont a lot when I was growing up in PA.</p>
<p>I’ve lived in the Philadelphia area for 25 years (grew up in NYC) and our family’s joke about the local news is that it starts this way: “The US economy is collapsing, and nuclear war begins in the Middle East…BUT, the big story on Action News tonight is the fire in Kensington that left three families homeless.”</p>
<p>It looks like the screaming woman lying “in a pool of blood” on the Penn campus is a mentally unstable woman who attacked some security guards when they wouldn’t let her into the main Wharton building without ID. She was taken to the hospital for “minor injuries”.</p>
<p>I give up. Yeah, Penn is awful and violent. Gritty, too. Beware!</p>
I have a vague memory of the butterscotch cake, I think.</p>