Philadelphia schools, from elementary schools to universities, are participating in the National School Walkout to protest gun violence after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.. The walkout is scheduled for 10 a.m. and will last 17 minutes, commemorating the 17 victims who died in the shooting.

Some local schools and parents shared information about their participation in the walkout on social media. Other schools sent out instructions to their students advising them on how to make the event safer.  Continue Reading

Source image by Kaitlin Moore, “The River,” taken at Lake Tekapo, New Zealand, August 2017.

This Wednesday, an exhibition of astrophotography (photographs of the sky at night) by Penn undergrad Kaitlin Moore will be opening at the Brodsky Gallery on Penn campus. Moore, a former astrophysics major, is interested in communicating both the scale and distance of astronomical objects in her photographs. She chose works that demonstrate the juxtaposition of normal, everyday objects, like buildings and trees, with wide, long-exposure shots of the stars.

“I tried to keep from being intimidated or scared of the scale of [my subject matter],” Moore says. “I had the opportunity to acknowledge my fear, and turn it into something beautiful.”  Continue Reading

If you are one of those who were patiently waiting for this coffee shop to open in Garden Court Plaza on the 4700 block of Pine Street, the wait is finally over. Kensington-based coffee shop, ReAnimator Coffee, opened its West Philly location this past weekend. The shop is run by co-founders Mark Capriotti and Mark Corpus, who had been supplying Mariposa Food Co-op with bulk coffee beans for a while and also operate cafes in Fishtown and the Graduate Hospital neighborhood. You can read more about them in our earlier post here.  Continue Reading

Photo courtesy of Watershed Stewards PHL.

High school students in West Philly have a chance to participate in a great local educational and job training program and also earn some money this summer.

The Philadelphia Water Department and the LandHealth Institute are recruiting local students for the second year of their Watershed Stewards PHL program.

Here’s how the program works:

Beginning in late spring, 15 high school students age 15-18 from the West Philadelphia area will work alongside PWD, the LandHealth Institute and Philadelphia Parks & Recreation (PPR) for 11 weeks. The training sessions will be held at the Cobbs Creek Community Environmental Center. Students will learn how to protect the Darby-Cobbs watershed, which flows through many West and Southwest Philadelphia neighborhoods. The program will cover such topics as ecology, watershed management and stormwater runoff. After the training sessions, students will spend the summer applying the new skills in their communities.  Continue Reading

Former Graphic Arts Inc. building at 41st and Chestnut (Photo West Philly Local).

Last August, we reported that Amazon had bought the former Graphic Arts Inc. building at 41st and Chestnut, but we weren’t certain to what use the e-commerce giant was going to put the 35,000 square-foot space. Now, we know: Prime Now LLC has applied for, and been granted, a permit to operate a “food establishment” on that site.

Prime Now is a service that Amazon operates in some urban areas — not Philadelphia yet — that features two-hour delivery for commonplace household goods, from groceries to socks to electronics. Amazon has also hinted that it might be expanding Prime Now into the restaurant delivery arena. As such, this new service is positioned to compete directly with supermarket and convenience delivery services like Instacart and GoPuff, as well as food delivery services like Grubhub, Caviar and Eat24.  Continue Reading

All School District of Philadelphia schools will be open on Thursday, March 8 with a two-hour delay, according to the District’s announcement. All buses will operate on a delayed schedule pushing morning pick up times back by two hours. Some yellow bus routes may experience moderate to significant delays Thursday morning.

All District-operated early childhood programs will also open on a two-hour delay. After-school activities including athletic programs and professional development sessions set for Thursday will continue as scheduled.

District administrative offices will be open on-time as regularly scheduled.

All Philadelphia public schools were closed on Wednesday.

UPDATE: The snow emergency declared in the city this morning ended at 9 p.m., so it’s now safe to park on snow emergency routes.