You still have one more chance to see the inside of the enigmatic St. Andrew’s Chapel, the beautiful church at the corner of 42nd and Spruce that hasn’t been regularly open to the public for 40 years.

Earlier this month the chapel hosted the temporary art installation “Ci-Lines” by Aaron Asis. The installation’s closing on Saturday will include “Stories of St. Andrew’s,” a discussion featuring three experts on the history of churches in the city.

St. Andrew’s was built in 1923 by the Philadelphia Divinity School to educate Episcopal priests and has not been open to the public since 1974. Learn more about the church’s history during the talk, which runs from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday.

Speakers will include:

• Davis d’Ambly – A liturgical artist who has worked in churches all over the city.

• Michael Krasluski – A librarian and professor at the University of the Sciences who curated the Philadelphia Studies blog, which tells the history of the city’s Episcopal churches through parish archives.

• Bob Legani – A member of the last graduating class of the Philadelphia Divinity School and a sacrastan who prepared the chapel for daily services for three years.

Fire officials are investigating the cause of a fire that broke out early Thursday morning at Café Renata (4305 Locust St.), sending one woman to the hospital.

The woman, who has not been identified, lived in an apartment above the café and suffered from smoke inhalation. She was listed in stable condition this morning. Café Renata was heavily damaged in the fire, which firefighters brought under control after about 30 minutes. The U Do We Do Laundromat next door to Café Renata also suffered some damage but was open this morning.

Café Renata co-owners Kate Steenstra and Yasser Aiq rent the space for their restaurant. It was not clear this morning when it might reopen.

Vacant lots in some parts of Philly are suddenly a hot commodity, meaning that the makeshift community gardens that residents have tended, sometimes for years, are disappearing. One that is in a fight for its life right now is the garden adjacent to the Ahimsa House on the 5000 block of Cedar Avenue.

Photo from the Ahimsa House’s Facebook page.

The property at 5005 Cedar was vacant until earlier this year, when a developer snatched it up just before it was to go up for sheriff’s sale. The likely buyer in that sale would have been Meg Ferrigno, who runs the Ahimsa House next door at 5007 Cedar, a community space focused on environmental sustainability and community mindfulness. A couple of years back the Ahimsa House began cultivating vegetables on the vacant lot and started a program to help students at nearby Samuel B. Huey School learn how to grow food.

“My neighbors helped shovel over a ton of compost mix onto the lot so we can grow organic veggies and fruits and have the space be 100 percent lead-free,” said Ferrigno in an e-mail. “The garden provides food for anyone who wants it and it provides a point of human-nature connection for our neighborhood. Everyone can plant, compost and harvest and we simply keep track of what is where on the chalkboard on the side of the house.”

As the owner of an adjacent property, Ferrigno had been advised to request that the property be put up for sheriff’s sale. The last owner died in the 80s, she said. But just before the sale a developer bought the property, brought the taxes up to date and then sold it to another developer for $62,000. That developer is willing to sell it to Ferrigno, but for no a dime under $80,000.

So now the fundraising has begun. Ahimsa House raised nearly $5,000 in a recent Indiegogo campaign. Now they have a GoFundMe campaign, which you can find here.

Once the garden is purchased back, Ferrigno plans to place it into a land trust. You can talk to Ferrigno about the garden by e-mailing ahimsahousephilly@gmail.com or calling 215-488-7772.

– Mike Lyons

Shakespeare in Clark Park is looking for young performers for this summer’s production of The Winter’s Tale. The production requires young singers, dancers, puppeteers and actors (ages 5 to 15). An information session will be held Wednesday, March 11 at the University City Arts League’s second floor meeting room (4226 Spruce St.) at 6:30 p.m. Attendance at the meeting is not required to audition.

Speaking of auditions … those will be held this Saturday, March 14, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Curio Theatre (48th and Baltimore). “Bring a song if you sing, or your instrument if you play,” the audition call reads. “Or just bring yourself and come tell us a joke! No experience necessary — just the willingness to play.”

For more information, check out the Shakespeare in Clark Park website.

Mary Pitts-Devine. From Linked In.

The 46-year-old woman who was shot eight times Sunday morning by a neighbor who then shot himself remains in “very critical condition” at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center, according to police.

Police say that Mary Pitts-Devine had an ongoing dispute with her male neighbor, identified in media reports as 53-year-old Steven Outlaw. They lived in separate apartments at 4530 Spruce Street in a three-story converted twin. Outlaw reportedly lived above Pitts-Devine, an entrepreneur, writer and former social worker.

The dispute culminated in Sunday’s shooting. Police recovered a handgun in Outlaw’s apartment that was registered to him.

Pitts-Devine, a 1997 graduate of LaSalle University, is the CEO and Founder of Prophetic Presentations, an artistic production company that is “speaking to the hearts of mankind via the arts,” according to its website. On the site, she writes that she has “a desire to help those trapped in the social ills of life, such as drug addiction, homelessness, disparity of all kinds, and severe family dysfunction. This burden stemmed from my brokenness I experienced as a child growing up in Foster Care.” On social media platforms, she writes that she is a breast cancer survivor and a kidney transplant recipient.

Neighbors have said that the dispute between her and Outlaw had been ongoing for about two years and that he had accused her of tapping his telephone line.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the friends and family of Ms. Pitts-Devine. We’ll update with new information when we get it.

– Mike Lyons

The numbers are in for “parklets,” those little curbside, pop-up platforms with tables and chairs found outside a few local businesses, and it turns out that people, and businesses, seem to like them.

The University City District studied parklet use in 2013 – observing and counting who used them and how – and released a report this week detailing what they found. The study included six parklets outside the Green Line Cafe on Baltimore Avenue, Honest Tom’s/Lil’ Pop Shop, Fu-Wah Market, Manakeesh Cafe, Little Baby’s Ice Cream in Cedar Park and Ramen Bar at 4040 Locust.

To get the data, the UCD parked an intern at each spot during the operating hours of the host businesses on Tuesdays and Wednesdays in the spring and summer of 2013.

It shows that most of the people who use the parklets are patrons of the “host” businesses (you don’t have to be, but most were). In terms of daily unique users, the Honest Tom’s/Lil’ Pop Shop parklet (which both offer very portable products) saw the most traffic (just over 140 per day) with the Green Line spot second at about 60 visitors. The parklet outside of Manakeesh, which sits curbside along a busy section of Walnut Street got only a few visitors per day.

Use at the Honest Tom’s/Lil’ Pop Shop location spiked at about 2 p.m. and then again at about 6:30 p.m. Green Line’s parklet was busiest at about 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. and Little Baby’s parklet saw most of its daily use between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. The others spiked during lunch and dinner times.  Continue Reading