Final Statistics from NEast Philly’s second incarnation

Monthly stats for this site's short existence. Click to enlarge.

Yesterday we announced that NEastPhilly.com has finally outgrown this WordPress.com template and has officially moved to a self-hosted, grown-up modified WordPress.org-style theme.

We are very proud of the growth we experienced — a stable 6,113 monthly page views in July, a fine total for a small community news portal for a community that is admittedly print-heavy — and were on pace to surpass that.

For a few weeks, the latest, greatest incarnation of NEastPhilly.com will lose some traffic due to back links and residual search engine optimization directed at this site, which now can only be accessed by NEastmag.WordPress.com, but we fully expect to build a stronger brand in our new location.

However all of those fresh stories, perspective and aggregation you loved about this site have been moved, so please update any links, and if you use any RSS feed readers, use this URL now.

For the forseeable future, this site will remain live, but inactive. All of our news and content will appear on NEastPhilly.com.

I hope you’ll follow along and help our continued traffic and immersion in our Northeast Philadelphia community grow further.

Part of the move to the new site is certainly devoted to the possibility of collecting advertisers and sponsorships, in addition to other revenue models, that can make NEastPhilly even more of a source to cover our neighborhoods.

I hope you’ll continue to support us. Thanks, and feel free to contact us about concerns, questions or interest in working together.

Nutter in Mayfair: 1,000 cops, 200 firefighters could be fired if no action

Mayor Nutter addressing a $700 million budget shortfall in Mayfair in front of the 2nd and 15th police district headquarters.

By Christopher Wink

Speaking in front of more than two dozen uniformed police officers and nearly as many firefighters and other officials from the city’s emergency services, Mayor Nutter yesterday heightened pressure on state legislators to “give Philadelphia the tools it needs to help itself.”

“If our General Assembly does not approve the two budget measures we’ve asked for — a temporary increase in the city sales tax and a variety of pension reforms — we will be faced with no choice but to implement a series of devastating cuts,” Nutter said outside the 2nd and 15th police district headquarters on Levick Street near Harbison Avenue in West Mayfair. “Cuts that will impact every neighborhood in Philadelphia, including right here in the Northeast.”

In May, City Council approved a balance budget that depended on those two provisions that need legislative approval: bumping up one percent the city’s sales tax for five years and re-amortizing the city’s pension system by pausing payments for two years and redistributing payments over 25 years instead of 20. Without those options, Nutter said they’ll have to revisit trying to close a $700 million budget shortfall.

At yesterday’s rally, Nutter focused on what that would do to Philadelphia generally and the Northeast specifically, a region of the city known for its communities of cops and firefighters.

Holy Family part of Inquirer’s Student Union 34

Christopher Wink

The Inquirer launched Student Union 34, an offshoot of Philly.com targeted at and produced by college students, on July 1. The site comprises 34 colleges in and around Philadelphia, with news, features and op-ed pieces from students with the help of some Inquirer editors.

The college education blog from the New York Times introduced the site to its readers, noting 34 has content from all the four-year schools of our region, including “lesser-known schools like Holy Family.” While a few of the bigger universities like Temple and Penn have students generating content, Holy Family University at Grant Avenue and Academy Road, is also on the list.

But that doesn’t mean anyone is representing the college by writing under the Holy Family mantle.

Northeast man poses as priest to comfort injured cop

Paul Schlear, of the Northeast, admitted to CBS3 yesterday that he has posed as a Catholic priest.

By Christopher Wink

The man who posed as a priest to comfort the family of a Philadelphia police officer seriously injured in a car crash last month is from the Northeast.

NEast Philly hasn’t yet independently confirmed what neighborhood he calls home, but Paul Schlear, 26, dressed as and referred to himself as a local Catholic priest to enter the intensive-care unit at the Torresdale campus of the old Frankford hospital to visit the family of Officer Richard Hayes, as reported by CBS3.

“I feel terrible for the Hayes family because they’re going through enough and I didn’t nee to do what I did,” he told CBS3.

Inga Saffron: Could I-95 be destroyed to improve waterfront?

By Christopher Wink

What if we just got rid of I-95?

In a high profile feature written from Boston for Sunday’s Inquirer by the paper’s celebrated architecture critic, growing attention paid to dismantling a one-mile stretch of the interstate that separates much of the city from the Delaware River is compared to bean town’s notorious “Big Dig,” and other urban projects that jettisoned highway systems.

“The question we should be asking right now is: Do we rebuild I-95 as is, or do we rethink the whole thing?” Harris Steinberg, who runs the nonprofit consulting firm PennPraxis, which developed a waterfront policy for the city in 2007, told Saffron. The Obama administration’s interest in urban areas, he said, “has given the city a license to do something bold.”

The Northeast is surely as a part of 95 as any part of Philadelphia, so a big part of the discussion is what the people think.

Fox Chase native and Frankford resident behind ezLandlord Forms

By Christopher Wink

Assets are only the things that make you money.

Kevin Kiene said that is a mantra he took from Robert Kiyosaki, the author of Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

“Yes, I’m living in a house that’s worth $60,0000, and I probably should be living in a more expensive home,” said Kiene, who grew up in Fox Chase and now lives near the Smedley Franklin School in Frankford. “But the business is so important to me. So, that’s where the money goes.”

The business he’s talking about is ezLandlord Forms, an online provider of property-management legal documents of his own concept and design that will celebrate its third anniversary this August, as reported by Technically Philly.

“When most people think of a lease, they think ‘I’ll just fill in the blanks,’” he said. “Well, it doesn’t work like that.”

Festival brings new faces to Disston Saw Works in Tacony

Disston Saw Works in Tacony circa 1917, courtesy of WorkshopoftheWorld.com

By Christopher Wink

It was one of the largest and most impressive facilities of its kind the world over.

Now, Hidden City Philadelphia, a new arts festival, is giving visitors an opportunity to tour the famed Disston Saw Works in Tacony through June 28.

In 1850, Henry Disston began the company that would develop into the global leader of Northeast Philly fame. An evolved form of the industrial powerhouse called Disston Precision is still in operation.

Hidden City includes access to places like Girard College’s Founder’s Hall, Mother Bethel AME Church, Shiloh Baptist Church, the German Society of Pennsylvania and others, many of which include performances or discussions.

Frankford Y to close today, ending nearly 70-year reign

By Christopher Wink

In 1941, the New Frankford Community Y opened its doors. Today, 68 years later, it will close.

The center, a big brown mansion with an addition that includes an indoor swimming pool, is self-funded, depending largely on state grants. One grant for a cool $200,000 never came through last year. Employees haven’t been paid for a month, as reported by 6ABC.

The center sits at the corner of Leiper and Overington streets.

“I was doing everything we could possibly do to try and stay open,” Terry Tobin, the center’s executive director for the last 12 years, told the station. “We were grasping at straws and that didn’t work, so we had to make a tough decision.”

Thirty children are enrolled in the center’s preschool program, and another 30 are in an after-school program.

More than 800 Y members who use the center’s facilities, which includes the pool and fitness equipment, will need to find someplace else to go, too.

The center was a YWCA until the mid 1990s, when it became independent with the help of Frankford Hospital.

NEast Links: Half of Wissinoming prostitution ring in court, a Mayfair bank robbery and more

By Christopher Wink

Here’s a summary of the week’s Northeast news we didn’t cover. See others here.

The 22-year-old daughter in the alleged mother-daughter prostitution operation that advertised on the popular Craigslist Web site and was busted last fall has received a three-year probation sentence, the Daily News reported Wednesday.

The woman, Tami Smith, and her now 39-year-old mother were caught soliciting an undercover police officer in a home they rented in Wissinoming, as CBS3 reported in October.

In April, the mother, Traci Young, pleaded guilty, and she will be back in court June 30.

After jump read about your furry Northeast neighbors, an armed bandit in Mayfair and a handful of other stories from or about the Northeast, including our best read and most commented pieces of the week.

An interview with Rhawnhurst graphic novelist Duane Swierczynski

By Christopher Wink

He is a rising star in graphic novels and comics, but like too many people, Duane Swierczynski saw a neighborhood he loved make a change for the worse.

The Frankford-native discovered in 2005 that a pack of heroin dealers had taken over his peaceful childhood home on the 4700-block of Darrah Street, just east of the Margaret Orthodox El stop.

“[Growing up] my daily commute was a stroll down Frankford Avenue, right under the El,” he says. ” Which was an education in itself.”

And Swierczynski, 37, who made stops in Center City, Pennypack, New York City and elsewhere after leaving Frankford and before moving to Rhawnhurst in 2002, has come a long way from those roots playing underneath the El.

Using social media, a wicked pen and a wild imagination, he has developed something of a legend — a proud son of Northeast Philadelphia.

He has written five graphic novels, been anthologized in a half-dozen published collections, and has movie producers nipping at his heels. His latest novel out is the acclaimed Severance Package, and he’s been getting attention for bringing Punisher to Philly, as author of Marvel Comics’ monthly series Cable and The Immortal Iron Fist.

But, his native and bubbling neighborhood that is often at odds with Northwood, Wissinoming and Oxford Circle has been the inspiration of his writing before, and it seems like it will be again.

“Frankford’s going to play a huge role in my next novel, which should be out next year,” the former editor of CityPaper says. “It’s a murder mystery that plays out over 50 years. I don’t want to say more than that, but it’ll definitely be my most Northeast-centric book.”

After the jump, see a childhood photo and read where the Northeast shows up in his novels, when his kids will finally be able to know what daddy does and more.