What could be a harbinger of fast food restaurants to come opened near 40th and Walnut this week.
Sweet Green features “make your own” salads that include season and, when possible, local ingredients for $6.35. Ingredients include a range of greens – from mesclun (lettuces combined with some dandelion greens or other edible leaves) to baby spinach – a ton of fruits and vegetables, five kinds of cheese, and more than a dozen dressings. Meats, tofu and shrimp are a little extra. Other salads and wraps range from $7.50 to $11.
Organic frozen yogurt is also on the menu. A naked cone is $2.50. A small bowl of soup is $3.75 and drinks include housemade lemonade and iced tea.
The West Philly location is the second in the area (the other is in Ardmore). Sweet Green started in the D.C. area and company officials say the West Philly location design is a throwback to their original store. The inside of a fast food-style restaurant can’t get much more hip than this place. The woodwork, for example, is made from recycled bowling lane planks.
Here are two fine stories on two important entities in West Philly.
• Newsworks, WHYY’s community news service, takes us insideHMS School on Baltimore Avenue bordering Clark Park. Fifty six students attend HMS, a pretty fantastic place that has been educating kids with Cerebral Palsy for generations. The story reports on an art festival at the school and includes an inspiring slideshow. Eiko Fan, the school’s art teacher, said that students use special brushes, some paint with markers attached to headbands, others with their feet: “Everything is abstract, but it is powerful,” she told Maiken Scott.
• Philadelphia City Papertakes us inside NextFab Studio at 3711 Market St., which calls itself a “gym for innovators.” This is a place where you pay a membership to get access to all sorts of high-tech gadgetry. The idea is to use the space and the stuff to build things. For example, one dude is working on a computer powered by a steam engine. NextFab founder Evan Malone told City Paper’s Theresa Everline: “My vision for this place was for inventors to be able to go from a concept to an aesthetically pleasing product that they could show people.”
Saturday is “Love Your Park Day” in Philadelphia. For most of us, I suspect that every day is love your park day, but this one is official. That means that volunteers are needed.
Volunteers are needed at Clark Park from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Projects include cleaning the peripheral areas of the park to get them ready for spring and putting mulch around tree bases, beginning with the trees near the shuffleboard court at 45th and Chester. If weather permits, park benches will get a coat of sealant.
Help is also needed at Malcolm X. Park for a general clean-up from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. and at Barkan Park (50th & Spruce) from 10 a.m. to 12:00 p.m.
Volunteers are also needed at Cedar Park from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. to help with the park gardens. Bring clippers and cutting shears if you have them. Other tools will be provided.
Every couple of weeks a small room in the Lucien E. Blackwell West Philadelphia Regional Library at 52nd and Sansom is converted into a shrine to the Japanese comic art genre of manga. Teens and ‘tweens (10-12 year-olds) stop by to talk manga, draw manga, read manga and even listen to music about manga.
Manga, which in Japan is read by all segments of society, has swept through this generation of American kids in Harry Potter-like fashion.
“It appeals to a wide range of what you’re looking for,” said Shaunda, a Philadelphia High School for Girls student. “If you’re looking for fantasy, they have fantasy. They’re got action and lots of romance.”
Librarians have welcomed the interest in manga and have dedicated more money to bolster library collections.
“Some of the stories are kind of fantastic,” said Blackwell librarian Jeanne Hamann.
She added that kids who grew up with Pokemon were sort of “primed” for manga.
Hamann also said interest in manga has opened a window into Japanese culture for many.
That was certainly evident at this week’s Manga Cafe. As fans sat at table drawing, reading and talking manga, Japanese music played in the background. Kids leafed through Japanese magazines and Japanese food was served.
See the slideshow below for a better look at the Manga Cafe.
Here’s a piece from the CBS Evening News last night on brothers Kareem and Daymar Rosser and their friend Brandon Reese from the Cowtown/Work to Ride polo team, which won the 42nd annual USPA National Interscholastic Championship tournament last month.
The three young men, all West Philly natives, were the first African American team ever to win the title.
The Curio Theatre Company is gearing up for another performance. This time West Philly’s own theater will tackle Tom Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, an absurd, tragicomedic twist on Shakespeare’s Hamlet.
We see Hamlet’s story unfold through the eyes of the courtiers and spies Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, two minor characters from the original work. But in this story Rosencrantz invents the hamburger and discovers gravity.
Liz Carlson directs the play, which features Eric Scotolati, CJ Keller and Brian McCann.
A recent post on the Curio Theatre blog describes the preparations for the run, which begins this week with a series of previews:
“It’s been an absolute inspiration to see Eric Scotolati, CJ Keller and Brian McCann work tirelessly to achieve the seeming effortlessness of Tom Stoppard’s rapier sharp wit; they’re at work when the rest of the cast comes in at the assigned time, and they remain at work when the rest of the cast leaves at the end of the night, perfecting every nuance and giving each movement the specificity it needs.”
Previews will run Thursday, Friday and Saturday this week. Performances begin at 8 p.m. each night.
What could be a harbinger of fast food restaurants to come opened near 40th and Walnut this week.
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