Take a break from spring cleaning and your other weekend duties this Saturday, April 29, and get over to The Woodlands for the Go West! Craft Fest, the bi-annual music/food/artisan wares celebration.

Go West! runs from 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. on Saturday and the rain date is the following day.

All-female aerial troupe, tinycircus, will again perform at Go West! Craft Fest. (Photos West Philly Local)

More than 100 artisan vendors will take part this spring, including seven food vendors like West Philly favorites Taco Angeleno and Kung Fu Hoagies. 

This family-friendly event also includes live music, kids activities and a performance by the always entertaining and inspiring tinycircus from Tangle Movement Arts.

Here’s the lineup:  Continue Reading

Aetna Gallagher is Madame Bovary (Photo by Rebecca Gudelunas)

West Philly’s Curio Theatre Company‘s final performance of the season, a laugh-filled retelling of Gustav Flaubert’s classic novel Madame Bovary, premieres this Friday (April 28).

Yes, that’s right – laugh-filled. Entitled The Massive Tragedy of Madame Bovary, the play is the North America debut of an adaption of Flaubert’s work by Peepolykus, a UK based touring company.

As you may know, Madame Bovary tells the story of a 19th century marriage in the north of France. The story’s got intrigue, passion and adultery. What it didn’t have is whimsy – until now. The work retells the tragic story of Emma Bovary in a way that may remind theatergoers of Curio’s hilarious adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles in 2013. Peepolykus also wrote that play.  Continue Reading

UC Green will honor the memory of community greening activist Winnie Harris on Saturday by planting a mighty swamp oak in Clark Park.

Winnie Harris (center) was murdered in West Philadelphia on Feb. 3.

Tragically, Harris was murdered in her home earlier this year. She was a longtime advocate of community green space and served as volunteer coordinator and executive director of UC Green. Community members are invited to a light breakfast at 9:15 a.m. at City School at 41st and Baltimore on Saturday (April 22). Everyone will then walk together to Clark Park to plant the tree and then spend the rest of Earth Day doing what Winnie loved – planting trees in West Philadelphia.

UC Green volunteers will help McMichael School students and staff plant four trees near 35th St. and Fairmount Ave. Other volunteers will help homeowners and residents in Spruce Hill plant about 28 trees.

The event is open to the public and anyone who plans to attend should call or 215-476-0124 or e-mail eleatherbarrow@ucgreen.org.

The city’s Redevelopment Authority selected a local developer to rebuild the residential blocks destroyed in the 1985 MOVE bombing.

If approved by the authority’s board, Philadelphia-based builders AJR Endeavors LLC will rebuild the 36 homes hastily constructed after the bombing on the 6200 blocks of Osage Avenue and Pine Street in the Cobbs Creek section of West Philadelphia. The project will cost an estimated $3.2 million and AJR Endeavors’ bid was one of two received by the authority. The agreement will require construction to be completed within two years of its start.

The fire that destroyed more than 50 neighboring homes began after police dropped a small bomb from a helicopter on a home at 6221 Osage Ave. following a long standoff with members of the black liberation group MOVE who had barricaded themselves inside. Eleven people, including five children, were killed.  Continue Reading

Dogs on and off leashes in the Clark Park Bowl will be the main focus of Monday’s annual members meeting of the Friends of Clark Park.

The Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation has promised to step up enforcement of rules about off-leash dogs in city parks following dog attacks in Pastorius Park in Chestnut Hill. City park rules require dogs outside of a dog run to be on a leash that is 6-feet long or shorter.

But what about the Bowl, where dogs have been running free with their owners nearby for years and years? Monday’s meeting, which starts at 7 p.m. in the University of the Sciences’ Griffith Hall (43rd and Woodland), will take up this discussion – again.  Continue Reading

The Wiota Street Community Garden (from Google Street View).

The Redevelopment Authority voted to save the Wiota Street Community Garden yesterday, rejecting a sale of the land to a developer who planned to build residences on the property on the 4000 block of Powelton Avenue.

The land has been owned for decades by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, which heard a proposal yesterday to sell the land to AJR Endeavors LLC. Several residents attended the monthly authority meeting on Wednesday to speak in favor of the garden. Despite Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell’s support of the sale, the Authority unanimously voted against it, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Community members have been lobbying for years to keep the property a garden. A community meeting in December 2014 drew a pledge from Blackwell, who was present at the meeting, to help preserve the garden when developers expressed interest in the property.  Continue Reading