Anthony Byrne’s Street of Hard Knox

That miserable blighter Anthony Byrne is in the news yet again.  He’s the publisher of the well-established “Irish Edition,” so that likely gives him strong local connections.  Though if he is connected, his political donations are well hidden.  The house he owns has been an eyesore for years.  But it’s really city hall that’s the ultimate bad guy here, because there is no enforcement of laws reining in slumlords and tax deadbeats.

The recently published book, “Irish Philadelphia,” (which has a foreward written by the (dis) Honorable Seamus McCaffery) has an entry waxing eloquent about Mr. Byrne.  If only our judiciary were so accommodating to neighbors whose lives are adversely affected by scofflaws  like Tony Byrne.

Philadelphia’s AVI Goes Hollywood!

With so many city employees paid to surf the net, is it surprising that google maps street view is the basis for the city’s Actual Value Initiative?  Okay, that seems a little farfetched, but nakedphilly has some evidence.  And they’re not the only one’s questioning the accuracy of the calculations, even Councilman Squilla thinks the process may be flawed.

Paying more in a city with poor services can certainly be taxing, but you’d hope the process would at least be based on solid real estate data…

 

Philadelphia City Council: Ungreening by Undoing Zoning Code Reform

Thank god someone in city hall is finally reigning in the riduculous misuse of valuable real estate in this city.  Some of these are large plots of land that are used by crazy hippie types to GROW FOOD!  Helllooo…um, food comes from the grocery store.  And grocery stores EMPLOY PEOPLE and PAY TAXES.  Land is for development, not so some dilletantes can pretend they’re under the Tuscan sun…

Luckily, Brian O’Neill is taking us back to the good old days of Philly zoning, when you could have a nice hat factory or a smelter in your neighborhood.  Not some useless plot of cabbages taking up valuable commercial space.  He’s not going to let 2 years of zoning reform stop him from keeping the Far Northeast just the  way it was since the mid-century.  His new bill sends the clear message that we liked our zoning just fine, thank yous very much.  Brian’s been on council longer than anyone, so he’s probably more nostalgic for Philly’s political salad days when cronyism outweighed crop-raising.

What even is a community garden anyway???

The Forum Theater: R.I.Porn (or Fleshing Out Improvements on Market Street West)

The Internet has finally succeeded in killing off the last of the porno palaces.  No more sitting in the dark with a bunch of other pervs with your feet sticking to the floor.  Everybody now just gets their smut online – alone in their homes without the tender touch of fellow film goers.  Alas, another shared social activity destroyed by the digital revolution.  There are, surprisingly,  a couple of melancholic reviews of the theater online.

The Forum theater opened in the swinging 70s and amazingly, given it’s piece of real estate, survived into the 21^st century.  Philly mag has a “research” piece on The Forum which is fascinating…

So how will this seedy block improve now that the adult establishments have been exxxpunged?   The current owner has a few suggestions, including a yarn store.  Hmmm, that conjures up a whole new image when you hear yarn bombing…

The problem with modern day porn films is that they lack a good yarn…

 

Links: boobytrap, cozy, pillowboobs, beanis

 

How to Destroy a Philadelphia Neighborhood: Robert’s (Coyle) Rules of Disorder!

Actually, it doesn’t seem all that difficult…  There are absentee landlords all over the tri-state area who specialize in blight in our city.  The pathetic thing is we do almost nothing about it.  Though, hopefully that’s changing with “Blight Court.”

Robert Coyle is such an egregious example of a slumlord that you couldn’t make him up.  One of his attorneys describes him as a “lunch pail, blue collar kind of guy,” which implies he’s not all that smart or savvy.  And if that’s true, how does he go from bus driver to highly leveraged real estate mogul in just a few years?  Any connections aren’t obvious and he doesn’t appear to be much of a political contributor, though he (and his son) have given to John Perzel (another upstanding citizen).

Maybe John can tell us how Polonia, a bank, ostensibly, based in Huntingdon Valley (with several branches near Pt Richmond), ended up having a 49% stake in this mess.  Does Mr. Perzel’s  connection to the bank’s president have anything to do with this?  Call me a conspiracy theorist, but do we really believe this scofflaw had no friends in local government?  Dat ain’t how Philly works…

 

[Full disclosure:  we thought Slumopoly was an original...oh, well]

Gambling Industry on Fire in Philadelphia?!? Ask Bart Blatstein!

Clearly it’s hot, or Bart would not want in on the action (but his desire to stake a claim in this development opportunity is not new “news”).   But, clearly Bart cares about the city and all the revenue he can generate for our poor schools.  And if the competition heats up too much, they can all cool it at Bart’s private swim club.

 

Umm…on another issue maybe we should start calling our town Phire-delphia, what with all the recent incendiary activity.

Between absentee landlords in Brooklyn sitting on dangerously derelict properties, to sadistic sociopaths torching animals, to our own high profile businessman whose decrepit building practically took out a major public transportation artery – this town is SMOKIN’! And not in a good way…

Maybe he’ll call it SPARX Casino…

ATTENTION SCOFFLAWS! Philly Post’s Guide to Tax Evasion

Victor Fiorillo has a great article about tax cheats in the City of Brotherly Love.

If  Mr. Fiorillo’s math is correct, the city is owed approximately $618,000,000.00 in delinquent taxes.  Practically the equivalent of the GDP of a third world country…Oh, sorry, I forgot, we are a third world country…

The amount is staggering, and the hubris of  the perpetrators seems boundless.  Those of us who do the right thing should be outraged, but we all know that’s just the way it is here in Philly.  We’re beaten down and apathetic in the face of a completely dysfunctional government that continues to financially burden law abiding citizens while others get away with murder.

If only there was SOME agency in the city that possessed SOME proficiency in collecting fees from the citizenry!  It seems impossible that any department could be that efficient at such a task…

 

The Greenest (Greene-est) City in America?

What is it with this city and guys named Green(e)?  It seems they’re obsessed with green!  Is this why we’re the greenest city in the country – because we hemorrhage money?  From the Housing Authority, to the School District, to the Sheriff’s Office the flow never seems to stop.

One wonders how agency after agency can hemorrhage millions of dollars year after year and the bean counters in city hall remain oblivious.  Only the most Pollyanna patsy – or perhaps pure pipsqueak — could postulate that the prevailing purloining from the public purse is unknown by powerful pols.  Even the state failed to notice that the million bucks coming from sheriff’s sales every year suddenly dried up?!?