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Author: Stephanie Farr

  • Has Wawa’s food changed too much?

    Has Wawa’s food changed too much?

    This week’s question is… Has Wawa’s food changed too much?

    Stephanie Farr, Features Columnist

    In my 19 years here I’ve found Wawa has remained a consistent standard in my life, both in terms of quality and in terms of how often I eat it. I don’t think anyone would argue it’s the best food in a very foodie town but it’s never let me down.

    Tommy Rowan, Programming Editor

    Wawa lost something when they took out the meat slicers and stopped having bread delivered. In the early 2000s, at least to me, the sandwiches tasted fresher. It still had the spirit of a deli. Now it’s just like Subway. Which, hey, fine in a pinch. But I’m not going out of my way to stop anymore.

    Jenn Ladd, Deputy Food Editor

    As a Montco native, Wawa was a big part of my teenage years. Like most kids in this area, I thought of it as sort of a third space in high school — have many fond memories of sitting in or around my car or a friend’s car in Wawa parking lots in Flourtown, Wynnewood, Ocean City, etc. — and then when I went to college in Baltimore, that tether remained. I’d drive 25 minutes each way from the northern edge of Baltimore City to a Wawa in like Parkville, Maryland or something. I’d get gas, coffee, and a breaded chicken sandwich or the protein snack pack (grapes, cheese, crackers). Often, I’d round up the other Philly-area kids and we’d all go together at like 11 p.m. on a weeknight. It was a ritual.

    All of that is to say, I once held deep-seated affection for Wawa.

    The Wawa at the corner of 34th and Market Street near Drexel University will be closing in Philadelphia, on Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026.

    But it has lost that spot in the past three or four years.

    I used to commence each long-distance road trip with a Wawa breakfast hoagie — the scrambled eggs used to be so rich, you really didn’t need cheese because they were that good and plentiful; the sausage was really flavorful; the portion so abundant, you could drive for hours without feeling the need for a snack. The last time I got a breakfast sandwich from Wawa, I gotta tell you, it was sad.

    I was sad.

    Stephanie Farr

    A road trip still doesn’t start for me until I get a Wawa Sizzli — croissant, egg, turkey sausage, and cheese — and I’ve never been disappointed. That being said, I recently got a breakfast sandwich at the flagship Wawa at 6th and Market and that one came with scrambled eggs and it was a mess! I much prefer the egg mold.

    What has gone downhill for you guys?

    Workers assemble breakfast Sizzlis during the grand opening Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 of the very first Wawa in Central Pennsylvania – solid Sheetz territory – in the Dauphin County borough of Middletown.

    Jenn Ladd

    I’ve noticed the portions have gotten kinda puny for the custom-ordered stuff, which was my jam for years. And now I think you’re better off with the grab-and-go things — the Sizzlis.

    I think Wawa putting so much focus on the “Super Wawa” format and then constantly “innovating” with the food menu has really been its downfall. Like, just keep it simple.

    Tommy Rowan

    I still think about the old Buffalo Blue Breaded Chicken Sandwich. It was a robust and crispy chicken patty. And it was slathered in that bright orange buffalo-blue cheese sauce that brought the heat AND the tang. It was unmistakable and worth the price of admission. And it came on a fresh kaiser roll, to boot.

    They have introduced new lines of chicken sandwiches in recent years, but they’re not the same.

    Jenn Ladd

    God I used to love those chicken sandwiches. They had my heart over a hoagie almost every time.

    Sherly D’Alfonso (correct spelling) wraps a Turkey, Provolone, Tomato and Lettuce Hoagie. She and two others are assembling 300 hoagies during their time making hoagies. Wawa Welcome America Hoagie Day on Wednesday, July 1, 2020. Photograph taken at the Wawa at Chestnut St. at 6th in Center City Philadelphia.

    Stephanie Farr

    I’ve actually never tried one of their chicken sandwiches, but I am mad they took the spicy cherry pepper relish off the menu. That is a GOAT hoagie topping.

    Personally, I like Wawa’s soups, particularly the chicken noodle and tomato bisque. I’m sure they come out of a bag, but they taste pretty good and it’s not something you find at similar places, like Sheetz.

    Jenn Ladd

    [shudder at the thought of bagged soup]

    Stephanie Farr

    As I assumed you would, foodie. lol. It doesn’t bother me, but my standards are pretty low.

    Evan Weiss, Deputy Features Editor

    If you all could tell Wawa to change two things back, what would they be?

    Stephanie Farr

    Just give me back my spicy cherry pepper relish for the love of all that is holy please! Also, they better never get rid of the garlic aioli. Get that on a hoagie and bring it into a public place and everyone will ask you what smells so good (it’s happened to me in the newsroom!).

    Tommy Rowan

    Bring back the slicers and the fresh bread. It would make a huge difference.

    Jenn Ladd

    I’d have them remember their roots as opposed to coming up with novelties and/or trying to compete with other convenience store chains on selection (see Wawa pizza, a repeated failure). They used to have great sandwiches and snacks. I’ll forever cherish the memory of a boss in Baltimore putting a Wawa pretzel on my desk because she had been in the Philly area earlier in the day. It was like a little love note from home. They’ve gotten too corporate, so I basically just treat it like a gas station now.

    Science Leadership Academy eleventh grader Marcos Rufino gets another piece of Wawa cheese pizza at the school in Philadelphia on Thursday, Oct. 19, 2023.

    Stephanie Farr

    I was talking to someone about Wawa last week, after covering the first Sheetz opening in Montco, and they said while Sheetz may have more food offerings, Wawa will still remain supreme in the Philly region because: “We’re loyal and it has nothing to do with quality.”

    Honestly, I think that’s one of the reasons I love Philly so much. Tommy and Jenn, are you bucking that trend, have you forsaken your Wawa loyalty?

    Jenn Ladd

    I don’t believe in blind allegiance.

    But also, I don’t think we should just keep giving money to an entity that doesn’t seem to be minding the quality of what it’s putting out to customers.

    Just because we are fond of it.

    Stephanie Farr

    So I take it you’re not a Phillies or Flyers fan either?

    Jenn Ladd

    Ahahaha well I’m not giving them any money, that’s true.

    Tommy Rowan

    Hahaha I will always have a special place in my heart for Wawa. And I hope it comes back around. I’m going to be thinking of that chicken sandwich for the rest of the week now.

    Jenn Ladd

    I won’t even get into how Wawa has betrayed Philadelphia proper, but that’s another reason I’m loathe to be blindly loyal to them.

    I’d love for Wawa to make a quality comeback too, truth be told, but I don’t know that I’d realize that without this conversation.

    Have a question of your own? Or an opinion? Email us.

  • We tried a cocktail bar’s new Philly-themed menu, from the HitchBOT to the Crum Bum

    We tried a cocktail bar’s new Philly-themed menu, from the HitchBOT to the Crum Bum

    When Aaron Deary, partner and general manager of R&D cocktail bar in Fishtown, began formulating his “liquid love letter” to Philly in honor of our nation’s 250th anniversary this year, he set out to challenge his bartenders in a new and novel way.

    Seems appropriate, given that Philadelphia finds new and novel ways to challenge each of us every day.

    Typically the mixologists at R&D receive cocktail projects that are flavor-focused, but for the bar’s latest themed menu, “Ripoff & Duplicate,” Deary asked them to create 13 drinks based on the stories, legends, and places that make Philadelphia Philly — from the murder of a meddling Canadian robot to the city’s long history of choking in big moments.

    Bartender Eddie Manno makes cocktails at R&D.

    The concoctions are presented in a 10-page glossy magazine-like menu designed by Deary that features cheeky Philly tidbits, tips, and neighborhood recommendations.

    “We obviously had to put some funny things in there, too, because that’s our city and we wanted to show off some of the more ridiculous sides of Philadelphia that we all love,” Deary said.

    While the new menu is the first of its kind for the bar, Deary said they plan to do other iterations throughout the year featuring different Philly neighborhoods and events. So while a dumpster pool drink didn’t make the cut this time, there’s still hope yet.

    The Casting Bait (a tropical sour with Vietnamese gin, mangosteen, ginger, guava, and lime) at R&D.

    “There were a few of them that came up and ones that I was a wee bit too scared to jump into, but you never know, you might see them in summertime,” Deary said.

    Can Philadelphia’s stories be conveyed in a cocktail glass, and, if so, do they taste good? Inquirer food writer Kiki Aranita joined me at R&D last week to find out. We chatted about our experience the next morning. — Stephanie Farr

    Kiki Aranita, food and dining reporter

    Looking at some of the cocktail descriptions, I won’t lie — I was initially skeptical. There was nutmeg paired with watermelon, cream cheese paired with white chocolate. It takes a sort of mad genius (or 10 of them) to come up with those flavor combinations and have them be good.

    I believe the technical term is “wackadoodle.”

    Stephanie Farr, Philly culture columnist

    Agreed. What I loved was how the drinks were created. Aaron told us they came up with the Philly reference for the drinks first and then created different challenges for the bartenders to invent them. For the HitchBOT, the rule was to create a drink made with ingredients from each of the countries HitchBOT went to before being murdered in Philly. So there’s a gin from Holland, a German herbal liqueur, a Philly orange liqueur, and Canadian maple syrup.

    Longing for Awnings and the Art of the Choke.

    For the Art of the Choke, an ode to all the times Philly’s choked in major moments over the years, the rule was to create a drink using ingredients that spelled out J-A-W-N, so there’s Jamaican rum, artichoke amaro, watermelon, and nutmeg.

    The best analogy I can think of is it was like these bartenders were given amazing writing prompts and came up with great liquid stories.

    Kiki Aranita

    HitchBOT was made blue by blue Curacao. It was the most visually stunning of all the drinks, which showed shocking restraint in terms of garnishes and presentation.

    It’s one of the less sweet sours I’ve had and it had Jagermeister in it, which gave it a surprising, herbaceous balance.

    The Hitchbot (a blue sour with Dutch gin, Jagermeister, maple, and lemon).

    Stephanie Farr

    I think the Crum Bum was really interesting. It’s listed on a menu page that tells about Philly’s history with pretzels and baseball, but it’s a pretty clear nod to the infamous incident where KYW reporter Stan Bohrman approached a then-retired Frank Rizzo to ask why city police were acting as his private security detail. In turn, Rizzo called him a “Crum Bum.” I love getting to introduce that legendary Philly moment to people who haven’t seen it yet. And as I said, as a reporter, it’s good to be hated by the right people, and Rizzo is definitely someone you want to be hated by.

    Also that drink came with a sidecar of pretzels, and it smelled like pretzels and Philly and love. It was a little strong for me though.

    Kiki Aranita

    We had to ask for seconds of pretzels at this point.

    Stephanie Farr

    I mean, that is a Philly drink. I want all my cocktails to come with a sidecar of pretzels from now on.

    The Crum Bum, a tequila old fashioned with genever, burnt honey, pretzel and mustard spices.

    Kiki Aranita

    I have to say — a lot of the drinks sounded weird but didn’t taste weird. They were straightforward, balanced, and really lovely.

    Stephanie Farr

    As you noted, there was a lack of garnishes overall, aside from a few twists. Do you think that was the right call? I don’t know why I was expecting them to come with a Tastykake on the rim or something. That being said, I did not miss the garnishes once I dove into the drinks.

    Kiki Aranita

    I’m not a native Philadelphian … and I’ve never had a Tastykake. I’m glad my first one didn’t have to be shoved into a cocktail last night.

    No component was ever too much. Longing for Awnings, an ode to South Philly, had lingering spice (but not too much!) from serrano pepper and beautiful body from tomatillo (but also not too much! It didn’t taste like salsa).

    I also loved the Kompleta martini, which I found really smart and a great way of using Polish bison-grass vodka (not the easiest to find and rarely seen except in Polish restaurants) with Italian Nonino bitters. It tells the story of major immigrant groups coming to Philly in a really thoughtful way.

    The Kompleta Martini with bison grass vodka, Italian bitters, and Islay gin.

    We also found that embedded in all the Philly history, there were personal stories, the fingerprints of previous bartenders and bar managers who left their mark on R&D. For instance, Resa Mueller, who used to run the bar there — her citywide is a pet-nat and room-temperature gin. You can go and order that off this Very Philly Menu.

    Stephanie Farr

    And how about that menu? It’s beautiful and cheeky — part neighborhood guide, part Philly history, part urban legend and also still a menu.

    In a small guide to Bella Vista in the menu, for instance, it says to go to Angelo’s but “don’t pee on the street” and it also reads “Magic Gardens, mushrooms,” without any context. I’m pretty sure they don’t sell mushrooms at the Magic Gardens, so I can only assume what they’re talking about here.

    Kiki Aranita

    They self-deprecatingly describe these cocktails as gimmicky, but they’re really not. They lead with flavor and balance first, and gimmick second.

    Reading through the menu (it’s basically a graphic novel) and tasting through the cocktails that were odes to different neighborhoods (though unfortunately not mine), made me feel a lot of Philly pride. You really see how vast our bank of flavors, spices, produce, and dishes is.

    And in the hands of nerds, it was so much fun to see what they came up with.

    I do have to recommend for our readers, though, that they should not attempt to try all the cocktails solo. Bring a group. There are so many cocktails.

    Stephanie Farr

    I think the menu also illustrates how vast our stories are but also how we have a shared sense of culture as Philadelphians — moments we all remember and some we can never forget, like when Philadelphians caught babies thrown from the window of an apartment building fire, “unlike Agholor.”

  • Sheetz opens its first store in Wawa land, right across from a Wawa

    Sheetz opens its first store in Wawa land, right across from a Wawa

    Sometimes Sheetz happens, and at 8:02 a.m. on Thursday it happened in Montgomery County, when the chain opened its first convenience store in what’s long been undisputed Wawa territory.

    The store — which is directly across from a Wawa on West Ridge Pike near Lewis Road in Limerick Township — opened not with a Boom Boom, but with a whisper.

    Unlike a Wawa grand opening — where fans often queue up well before the doors open and the line to get in wraps around the building — there was just David Swartz waiting outside for the opening, bundled up in his folding rocker chair.

    Swartz, 36, of Collegeville, who arrived an hour before the opening, was surprised to find himself the only one in line, as were the gaggle of Philadelphia reporters who far outnumbered him and peppered him for interviews.

    A self-identified “diehard Wawa fan,” Swartz said he came to Sheetz’s opening for the food.

    “There’s nothing you can get here that isn’t delicious,” he said. “I love Wawa but they need different stuff and that’s what Sheetz is here to do, they’re here to deliver that.”

    Slushies, plushies, and more

    Once the doors opened, folks who’d been waiting in their cars started to file in, forming a line for the coffee, which was free all day (the Wawa across the street offered free coffee on Thursday, too). Other customers explored the touch-screen menus, checked out the prepared food offerings, and browsed the aisles.

    Inside, Swartz poured himself a slushie and ordered a hot dog, nachos, and fish tacos with fries — at 8:15 a.m. He also picked up three Hello Kitty plushies for his girlfriend. Wawa, he pointed out, does not sell plushies.

    “My girlfriend is going to be very happy when I come home with these,” he said.

    Inside the store after being the first to enter, Dave Swartz of Collegeville organizes his plushie toys and frozen drink as the first Sheetz store opens in the Wawa territory Thursday in Limerick Township.

    Elsa Ortiz, 54, drove an hour from Philadelphia to pick up a hoagie (or “Subz” as they call them at Sheetz) for her boyfriend.

    “Sheetz is definitely better than Wawa for him,” she said. “Right now I’m neutral, but today I am a Sheetz girl.”

    Ortiz said the store being across from a Wawa is very on brand for the Philadelphia region.

    “The rivalry is just like Philly, with its rivalries and everything else,” she said. “Still, go Eagles! I’m still Eagles!”

    There are some rivalries you can play both sides of, and some you can’t.

    Shortly after 9 a.m., when giveaways for gift cards and Sheetz schwag began, the store became so packed with people it became a real Sheetz show and the line outside for freebies stretched down the building. The residents of the Delaware Valley may rep hard and local, but they also won’t say no to a free T-shirt.

    The expansions

    While opening a Sheetz across from an existing Wawa may seem like the new guy in town is throwing down the gauntlet, it’s actually a move taken out of Wawa’s own playbook. In 2024, when the Delaware County-based chain opened up its first store in central Pennsylvania — what was traditionally Sheetz country — it did so within eyeshot of an existing Sheetz.

    For decades, the urban lore in Pennsylvania was that there was a gentleman’s agreement regarding unspoken boundaries between Delco-based Wawa in the southeastern corner of the state and Blair County-based Sheetz, in south-central Pennsylvania.

    Amy Rudolph (seated) of Collegeville holds court with fellow grand opening patrons as she recounts her story of being #2 in line as the first Sheetz store opens in the Wawa territory Philadelphia suburbs Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026 in Limerick Township.

    But that’s all it was — lore (New Jersey has its own devil, we had to come up with something) — and as both chains began rapid expansions in the 2010s, it seemed inevitable they’d cross over to each other’s markets at some point. In fact, Wawa and Sheetz have coexisted in several markets already for some time, including right here in Pennsylvania, in Berks and Lehigh Counties, according to Wawa spokesperson Lori Bruce.

    Today, Wawa has 1,193 stores in 13 states and Washington, D.C., and more than 95 store openings planned for this year. Ten stores have gone up in central Pennsylvania in the last two years, with 40 more planned over the next five, Bruce said.

    Sheetz, meanwhile, has more than 800 stores in seven states. Previously, its closest store to Philadelphia was in Berks County, but now that it has officially moved into the Philly suburbs, it doesn’t appear it plans to slow down. Sheetz stores have been proposed in Chester County and even in Delco, at Painters Crossing shopping center in Chadds Ford, just five miles down the road from Wawa’s headquarters.

    Now that could get Sizzli.

    A rivalry?

    Representatives of both chains deny they are rivals and point out that they have worked together to support various nonprofits.

    Adam Sheetz, executive vice president of Sheetz, said it has been a friendly competition for decades.

    “They’re one of the best retailers in the country, certainly one of the best in our industry, and we have great respect for them and competing with them has just made us better over the years,” he said.

    Bruce agreed.

    “We’re fortunate to have always had a respectful and friendly relationship with the folks at Sheetz,” she said. “And, while we have always embraced healthy competition at Wawa, when we think about competitors, we tend to think about challenging ourselves to make sure we are meeting the needs of our customers and communities.”

    Folks may eat on trash cans at Wawa, but you’ll never hear Wawa officials talking trash on Sheetz. Wawa fans, on the hand, are a whole other hoagie roll.

    Craig Scott (left) of Wayne and Dave Swartz (right) of Collegeville have breakfast as the first Sheetz store opens in the Wawa territory in Limerick Township.

    The low-stakes rivalry between the stores’ fans has resulted in memes, debates, op-eds, and even a forthcoming documentary, Sheetz Vs. Wawa: The Movie.

    When news of the impending Sheetz opening spread last month, cheeky comments by Wawa fans on social media included “We are all protesting this,” “sheetz is temu wawa,” “Sheetz is fire, but Wawa is for life,” and “this is my heated rivarly [sic].””

    But local officials said they didn’t hear of any pushback on the Sheetz.

    Patrick Morroney, a Limerick Township supervisor, has never been to a Sheetz but said he’s pro-business and welcomed Sheetz opening a store in the community.

    “I think that people are going to find their niche between Wawa and Sheetz,” he said.

    Jamila Winder, chair of the Montgomery County commissioners, said she frequented Sheetz while going to Pennsylvania State University and having the company open a store in Montco is “nostalgic” for her.

    “Even though Wawa has dominance here in Montgomery County and the region, we always welcome new businesses because that creates economic drivers, job opportunities for both, and it just gives people options to choose from,” she said.

    The opening

    During his remarks at the opening ceremony, Neil Makhija, vice chair of the county commissioners, took a different approach and leaned into the playful rivalry by putting on a Wawa hat while speaking to the crowd.

    He called the opening a “complicated day” for him and many people in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

    “I thought, ‘What is happening to our community? Do we need a stronger border security policy in Montgomery County? Should we build a wall and make Delco pay for it?’” he said to laughter from the crowd. “[But] here in Montgomery County we’re welcoming, we’re inclusive, and we’re hungry and I think we’re OK with a little competition.”

  • Putting the Joe Frazier statue in the shadow of the Rocky statue is a low blow

    Putting the Joe Frazier statue in the shadow of the Rocky statue is a low blow

    I thought the absolute nonsense around the Rocky statue being permanently exalted to the top of the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art couldn’t be any more embarrassing for Philly. Then, the people in charge of these decisions ripped open my eyes, like Mick, to prove me wrong.

    On Wednesday, the Art Commission approved a proposal from Creative Philadelphia, the city’s office of arts and culture that maintains and preserves Philly’s art collection, to move the statue of legendary Philadelphia boxer “Smokin’” Joe Frazier from the stadium complex, where it’s been since 2014, to the base of the steps of the Art Museum.

    This would normally be a great thing — the Art Museum is in a much more prominent place in the city and Frazier deserves that honor — except that in this case, the Frazier statue is getting the Rocky statue’s leftovers. It’s a bigger smack in the face than a sucker punch in the ring.

    Creative Philadelphia didn’t think the nice little cove at the base of the Art Museum steps where the city’s Rocky statue has been displayed since 2006 was good enough for it anymore. So last month — despite an informal Inquirer poll that showed it was the last thing Philadelphians wanted — the commission approved Creative Philadelphia’s proposal to permanently move the city’s Rocky statue to the top of the steps. (There are currently three Rocky statues in Philadelphia; don’t even get me started on that.)

    A visitor poses with the Rocky statue atop the Philadelphia Museum of Arts steps.

    At the January meeting, commissioner Rebecca Segall said of the Rocky statue: “I believe it’s one of Philadelphia’s most meaningful monuments, and I believe we should just get him out of the bushes and put him up top.”

    Creative Philadelphia and the Art Commission decided “the bushes” weren’t good enough for Rocky, but will be good enough for Joe Frazier. They will put the statue of the real legendary Black boxer right there near a shipping container called the Rocky Shop that sells Sylvester Stallone-licensed products, as if it were some Black History Month consolation prize.

    I mean, c’mon! Do they even hear themselves?

    If any statue belongs at the top of the steps, it’s Frazier’s.

    I’m not the first to point out that Frazier deserves the recognition this city gives to Rocky, and if history is any indicator, I sadly won’t be the last.

    Joe Frazier poses in front of pictures from his career in an undated photo.

    In a letter of support for the move of Frazier’s statue, Mayor Cherelle L. Parker wrote that putting it at the Art Museum “affirms Philadelphia’s commitment to honoring real-life achievement alongside cultural mythology.”

    But when President Donald Trump’s administration is removing historical facts about slavery from the President’s House Site, why should mythology get top billing?

    At this time, we should not be elevating fiction in Philadelphia as the federal government is attempting to erase our facts.

    Yes, Rocky is a fictional Philadelphia icon, but Frazier, a former world heavyweight champ, was a real-life inspiration for the character, according to Creative Philadelphia, which mentioned it in its recent proposal.

    Frazier, who worked at a Philly slaughterhouse, claimed in a 2008 interview with the Guardian that he’d “go down that long rail of meat and work on my punching.”

    “That’s how [Sylvester] Stallone got the same idea for Rocky — just like he used the story about me training by running up the steps of the museum in Philly,” Frazier said. “But he never paid me for none of my past. I only got paid for a walk-on part. Rocky is a sad story for me.”

    Joe Frazier

    Frazier wasn’t just one of the inspirations for Rocky, he was one of the greatest heavyweight pugilists ever. In 1964, he won the Olympic gold medal in heavyweight boxing with a broken thumb, and in 1970, he won the world heavyweight title. Here in Philly he gave back, purchasing his own gym in North Philadelphia where he didn’t charge rent and trained a new generation of boxers who found community there.

    Putting the Rocky statue at the top of the steps is clearly designed to appeal to tourists, but those steps are not just a tourist attraction. They are the very place where Philadelphians go to celebrate and protest.

    It’s where the Eagles celebrated their Super Bowl wins and where Live 8 took place. It’s where people gathered during the protests against the murder of George Floyd in 2020 and I saw the lyrics of Woody Guthrie’s “All You Fascists” written on the steps in chalk. It will be the center stage for the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations on July Fourth, and in the center of it all will be the Rocky statue.

    The lyrics to Woody Gurthie’s “All You Fascists” written in chalk on the steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2020.

    Did Frazier not suffer enough slings and arrows in his life that even in death, this city is choosing to exalt the fictional character he inspired over the very man himself?

    That’s a sad story for Philadelphia.

    I understand why those who love and respect Frazier wrote letters of support for his statue’s move from the sports complex to the base of the Art Museum, where it will have more visibility and more people will get a chance to learn about him.

    Visitor pose with the Rocky statue at the base of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the proposed location for Joe Frazier’s statue.

    But we can and should do so much better to honor Frazier’s story, and Philadelphia’s. It should not have taken moving the Rocky statue to the top of the steps to get Frazier’s at the base, and when it does go there later this year, it should not be overshadowed by a fictional character based, in part, on him.

    The truth — especially about Black history in this country — is too important.

  • Philly’s 250th celebration will feature the biggest parade anywhere, six days of fireworks, and Floridian Segway riders

    Philly’s 250th celebration will feature the biggest parade anywhere, six days of fireworks, and Floridian Segway riders

    Philly will have the largest Semiquincentennial parade in the country this summer to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, along with six nights of fireworks to keep things lit well into the evening.

    Sure, Philadelphians find a reason to set off fireworks every night (what are you celebrating at 9:37 p.m. on a Thursday in February?!?), but the big difference is these will be professional.

    There is new information about first-time and returning events for the 2026 Wawa Welcome America Festival, Philly’s annual 16-day Independence celebration, but details about other events — like who’s going to headline the July 4 concert on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway — still remain under wraps.

    New this year will be the Salute to Independence Semiquincentennial Parade on July 3, which will feature people, performers, and personalities representing the country’s 50 states, its territories, and the District of Columbia.

    Miss Philadelphia 2023 Jacqueline Means waves to the crowd near Independence Hall during the Wawa Welcome America Salute to Independence Day Parade in 2023.

    Among them will be all Miss America state titleholders, several fife and drum corps, historical reenactors, dancers, 50 marching bands, unicycle riders, stilt walkers, a jump rope team from Maryland, a steel drum band from Michigan, a circus troupe from Illinois, the Milwaukee Dancing Grannies, and the Philly Drag Mafia.

    The Louisiana LunaChicks, a group whose members will dress like Mrs. Roper from Three’s Company, will also be performing in “patriotic caftans,” according to a news release. The LunaChicks may want to stay clear of the Segway Riders Club of The Villages, Florida, which is exactly what you think it is and will also be rolling in the parade.

    Not to be outdone, three Star Wars cosplay groups — Garrison Carida, Kyber Base, and the Mav Oya’la Clan — are teaming up to represent the lighter side of Pennsylvania (and the dark side of the force).

    A storm trooper with the Garrison Carida dances during the Philadelphia Independence Day Parade in 2014.

    The parade will also feature international bands from Ghana to Ireland; more than a dozen floats, including those celebrating Indigenous people and women’s right to vote; and a 20-by-40-foot Declaration of Independence.

    Wawa Welcome America’s six nights of fireworks begin June 20 (and on June 21) at a new event that has not yet been announced, according to a news release.

    Fireworks will also take place on June 25 at the Celebration of Black Music Month at the Dell Music Center, June 26 at the Kidchella Music Festival at Smith Memorial Playground, June 27 at a concert on the waterfront, and July 4, “following the star-studded concert” on the Parkway, absolutely no details of which were included in the release.

    Fireworks over the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the statue of George Washington at Eakins Oval during the Wawa Welcome America Festival on July 4, 2023, following a free concert featuring Demi Lovato and Ludacris on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

    Returning events include:

    • June 19: Juneteenth Block Party at the African American Museum
    • June 24: Five Points Night Market at Cottman and Rising Sun Avenues in Northeast Philly
    • June 27: Concillio’s Annual Hispanic Fiesta at LOVE Park
    • June 28: Gospel on Independence at Independence National Historical Park
    • July 1: Wawa Hoagie Day on Independence Mall
    • July 2: Red, White, & Blue To-Do parade, block party, and folk festival at sites across the Historic District
    • July 2: Salute to Service: The U.S. Army Field Band & Soldiers’ Chorus at Independence National Historical Park.
    • July 3: Pops on Independence at Independence Park
    • July 4: Celebration of Freedom Ceremony outside of Independence Hall

    For more details about Wawa Welcome America, visit july4thphilly.com/events.

  • Delco’s iconic strip club is rebranding but keeping its Mother’s Day flower sale

    Delco’s iconic strip club is rebranding but keeping its Mother’s Day flower sale

    Shockingly, Delaware County has only one strip club, Lou Turk’s in Tinicum Township. Not shockingly, it bills itself as “historic” and a “Delco icon.”

    Over on Yelp, reviewers call it a “hallowed hall,” “better than expected,” and “the Cheers of the female entertainment industry in the Philly area.”

    Now, folks can call Lou Turk’s something else: the Carousel Delco, though the odds that they will actually call it that are exactly zero. It’s as likely as Philadelphians calling the Gallery the Fashion District or anyone saying Columbus Boulevard instead of Delaware Avenue.

    A Delco institution for more than 50 years, Lou Turk’s announced it was rebranding via a statement on its social media pages last weekend, prompting comments like “April fools?” “Fake news?” and “This may go down as the biggest travesty to ever occur in Delco … and my god that’s saying something.”

    Along with the new name, the club released what appears to be new signage, with the word “CAROUSEL” spelled out using silhouettes of nude women. The establishment also announced recent renovations, new amenities, menu enhancements, and new management. Yeah, new management that did not return my requests for an interview about why this was done.

    I have no idea what would inspire someone to name a strip club “The Carousel Delco,” aside from the fact that both have poles. The club’s statement seems to explain why the new name was chosen, but it actually doesn’t. Classic Delco.

    “We are still a Delco bar — always have been, always will be,” it reads. “That legacy is exactly why this name was chosen.”

    Wait, did Delco bars all used to have carousels inside? If so, I definitely missed this county’s Belle Époque.

    When I saw the news, my biggest fear was that one of Delco’s most storied traditions could be in jeopardy — the annual Mother’s Day and Easter flower sales outside of the strip club. It’s been the subject of countless memes and something I’ve used in stories as shorthand to explain Delco culture.

    Luckily, whoever wrote the club’s statement anticipated that concern and immediately assuaged all fears:

    “We look forward to many more awesome memes along the way … and we will still be selling flowers this Mother’s Day holiday.”

    Whew! I mean you wouldn’t want to tell your mom you bought her flowers at the Acme, would you?

    Trials and tribulations

    The establishment was purchased in the mid-1960s by the late Louis Saddic, who was better known as Lou Turk, a name he picked up as a kid in South Philly, according to a 1983 Inquirer article.

    Located in the Essington section of Tinicum, just off of Route 291, the club is situated in between an Irish pub and a Wawa, because of course it is. It’s so close to the Philadelphia International Airport you can see the underbellies of planes flying low overhead, which historically made Lou Turk’s a popular layover spot for travelers. Being near the shipyard didn’t hurt either.

    The building itself is a windowless parallelogram painted in a muddy brown, with LOU TURKS plastered in large white letters on a gray patch on the side and “LT’s Cabaret” written on the awning.

    Lou Turk’s is at the intersection of Powahatan and Jansen Avenues in the Essington section of Tinicum Township.

    It’s unclear if the business was always a strip club, but it definitely was by 1973, when it started to receive citations by the PLCB for “lewd, immoral or improper entertainment,” according to our archives.

    In 1983, the club was raided twice, the second time by 55 police officers who confiscated a whopping total of $19 from dancers they claimed had sexual contact with patrons. Turk, who was subsequently hit with prostitution and racketeering charges, vehemently denied the claims, as did five dancers and five other employees arrested in the raid.

    William J. Davies, then-deputy district attorney for Delaware County, said at the time of Lou Turk’s: “It won’t reopen” and “We are not going to tolerate this sort of thing out in Delaware County.” Boy, was he off base.

    The following year at trial one dancer testified she would “haul off and slug” any patron who tried to get handsy, which tracks for Delco. Investigators who testified used marshmallows and hand puppets to describe what they allegedly witnessed in the club, a Daily News report said.

    Turk was represented at trial by the late high-profile attorney A. Charles Peruto Sr., who at one point, while questioning a PLCB agent’s testimony about interactions between a dancer and a patron, “assumed the dancer’s squatting position in front of the jury box and questioned the agent about the physical possibility of the act he had described,” according to an Inquirer article.

    It’s unclear if the jurors threw Peruto tips, but what is becoming clear is how the club got its storied reputation in the annals of Delco history.

    Turk’s case ended in a mistrial because prosecutors didn’t supply his attorney with the necessary discovery material before the case went to court. You can’t hide anything when prosecuting a strip club.

    In 1990, a judge ordered the club to close for a year, after it had racked up a dozen citations between 1975 and 1990, “the longest history of state liquor code violations in the Philadelphia area for lewd entertainment,” The Inquirer wrote at the time.

    During the shutdown, the bar operated a sandwich shop with a walk-up window for a few months, but it didn’t cut the mustard.

    Lou Turk’s reopened on July 1, 1991, and The Inquirer was surprisingly there on opening day to see a dancer named Gail with palm tree pasties perform to the dulcet tones of ’80s glam metal band Ratt.

    The establishment hasn’t made headlines since, according to our archives, aside from a report by unnamed sources that Ryan Howard visited the club in 2008, and several passing references to it in stories about Delco culture by yours truly.

    ‘Holy mackerel!’

    I’m not sure when I first became aware of Lou Turk’s. As a nearly two-decade transplant, it’s the stuff of legends that’s always been here and I’ve always heard talked about, like Wawa or the Lower Swedish Cabin.

    Whenever someone asks for a suggestion for the best place to eat or visit on the Delco subreddit or on a local Facebook page, someone inevitably suggests Lou Turk’s, tongue-in-cheek, like they do Woody’s in Philly.

    “I think I even got a Lou Turks answer to me asking about vets in the area for my cat lol I died,” one Redditor posted.

    “Did the cat survive?” another asked.

    “Yeah he got a lap dance and started feeling better.”

    Several reviewers on Yelp attest that the club’s food is pretty good. Even Jim Pappas, who’s gained local notoriety for trying and cataloging more than 1,100 cheesesteaks in the tristate area on his Philadelphia Cheesesteak Adventure website and YouTube channel, gave the food a thumbs-up.

    “Holy mackerel! Who knew Lou Turk’s would have great food?” he says in his review.

    One Yelp reviewer in 2011 even used a cheesesteak analogy to describe the place.

    “As far as quality of performers go, think of this place as a cheesesteak shop in comparison to LeBec Fin; you can get a very satisfying quality meal, but it’s not exactly something you’d be bragging about to everyone you meet,” they wrote.

    Uncle Lou’s

    Changing the name of anything is hard, especially around here, where change is as welcome as the Dallas Cowboys.

    But it may be particularly difficult for Lou Turk’s, which is so ingrained in local culture some folks call it Uncle Lou’s.

    That’s the great thing about Delco. It doesn’t have famous tourist sites like Longwood Gardens or King of Prussia Mall, but what it has it owns to the bone, including its lone strip club.

  • Delaware County, N.Y., can’t take Delco away from Delco

    Delaware County, N.Y., can’t take Delco away from Delco

    I’ve long been aware that there are other Philadelphias in the world. There’s one in Mississippi, one in South Africa, and one right here in Pennsylvania — New Philadelphia, a rural Schuylkill County borough with a bustling population of 1,008.

    Philadelphia is a cool name and it comes with an inherent nickname that’s equally as cool. Who wouldn’t want that for their town? I get it and I’m not even salty about it because when you say Philly, folks know what city you’re referring to, just like when you say “Go Birds,” everybody knows you aren’t talking about the Seahawks.

    I always assumed there were places that shared our suburban counties’ names as well, but never in a million Wawa Hoagiefests did I expect there to be another Delco, especially not one that also has its own merch. That’s our weird thing.

    But after following up on a tip from my editor — who saw a reference to “Delco, N.Y.” — I found a website for DELCO, “a lifestyle brand celebrating rural culture through fashion, design & authentic content in Upstate NY.”

    The company sells shirts and hoodies that read “DELCO NEW YORK,” flags in “John Deer Green” that read the same, and a trucker hat with Calvin (the comic strip character) urinating on the word DELCO.

    It’s not clear how this lifestyle brand can produce “authentic content” while soaking in a hot tub full of boiling lies, for there is only one true Delco and it’s here, in Southeastern Pa.

    Delco residents haven’t spent years putting the word Delco on everything, receiving national attention for some of the most bizarre crimes imaginable, and staking their giant Delco flags at the Jersey Shore like it was the moon to have some ersatz “Delco” capitalize off their questionably good name.

    The Hurley family of Springfield, Pa., flies their Delco flag on the beach in Ventnor in 2024.

    “We’ve defined what it means to be Delco,” Rob MacPherson, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Visit Delco, told me.

    Fran McElwee, marketing strategist for the county tourism agency, agreed.

    “We are who we are and we know it,” she said. “We’re the OG.”

    Requests for interviews with a representative of DELCO, the New York lifestyle brand, and with the president of the board of supervisors for Delaware County, N.Y., were not returned. Isn’t that interesting.

    Rural vs. suburban

    There are at least six Delaware Counties in the United States, one each in Indiana, Iowa, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania. But ours was the first, having been established in 1789.

    While many of those counties also use some form of Delco (DelCo, Del-Co, etc.) for municipal government website URLs or public utilities names, Delaware County, N.Y., appears to be the only one trying to co-opt Delco as a culture.

    Our Delco and the one in New York were both named after the Delaware River, which forms the border between the Empire State’s Delaware County in its southern tier and Pennsylvania’s Wayne County, in the far northeast.

    Both counties also have municipalities named Middletown, we don’t like New York City folks coming in and mucking stuff up, and we have an affinity for mullets, as evidenced by the models on the DELCO lifestyle brand’s website. But that’s where the similarities end.

    Delaware County, N.Y., is rural (which, if you’re from real Delco, would be pronounced so it rhymes with “gurrrl” for emphasis). It’s 1,467 square miles with 29 municipalities and 44,191 residents, so it’s safe to assume there are more deer there than people.

    According to the county website, top activities include fishing, snowmobiling, and hiking. Historically, the region was known for its sawmills, dairy farms, and the Western Catskills.

    Delco, Pa., on the other hand, is more suburban than a Chevy or a cul-de-sac. It shoves 49 municipalities and 584,882 people into 184 square miles. This county is like a damn clown car. We don’t even know how we all fit in here, we’re just along for the ride.

    Eagles fans wave team flags from the top of their van while tailgating near Lincoln Financial Field.

    Our top Delco activities include tailgating, Wawa runs, and creative shenanigans. Historically, we were the first landing site of William Penn in Pennsylvania, the county where Martin Luther King Jr. attended seminary school, and the birthplace of the Slinky and stromboli.

    But our greatest asset, what makes us the real Delco, is our culture.

    People here are so passionate they’ve made a Delco movie, Delco beer, and Delco-set TV shows. Residents get Delco tattoos, there’s a state-recognized Delco Day, and I once interviewed a guy who climbed Mount Kilimanjaro with the sole purpose of waving a Delco flag at the top.

    Roddie Cooper’s driving force to climb Mount Kilimanjaro was to get this photograph of the Delco flag at the top.

    So whenever “Delco,” N.Y. wants to wave one of its flags in truce, we’ll gladly come take it.

    ‘A way of life’

    “Delco is different, it’s a personality, it’s a way of life, there’s an authenticity about Delco you don’t find in other counties,” McElwee told me.

    Zac Beaver, programming and libraries manager for the Delaware County Historical Society, said Delco’s hyperlocal culture sets it apart. It has its own accent, history, and even its own love language.

    “A hoagie tray is a meaningful unit of generosity,” Beaver said.

    Dave Avicolli (left) and Steve Yancey, co-owners of Ro-Lynn Deli in Brookhaven hold a “meaningful unit of generosity,” a Delco hoagie tray.

    There are even unspoken rules for Delco neighborhood bars.

    “They don’t have a website, only a Facebook page at most,” MacPherson said. “And no more than two IPAs on tap.”

    He theorized that part of the county’s strong identity comes from the fact that there are so many municipalities and many folks attended Catholic schools or school districts like Interboro, which cover several townships.

    “So your commonality was your county and not your hometown,” MacPherson said. “I think that’s led to the notion of Delco.”

    Delco residents “don’t have very lofty ideas about what it means to be from Delco, like [they would] if they were from New York City or California,” Beaver told me, and they may come across to some as brusque, but that’s just because they’re engaged and “as likely to say something negative as positive to you, whereas in the rest of the country they just won’t talk to you,” Beaver said.

    Such hyperlocal culture isn’t true of everywhere, Beaver posited.

    Actor Brian Anthony Wilson during the red carpet premiere of “Delco: The Movie” at the Media Theatre last year. Yes, “premier” is spelled wrong on the marquee. Yes, that is very Delco.

    “If you live in suburban Iowa you might as well live in suburban Nebraska,” he said. “I think it has to do with the flattening of the American experience. I think everyone else has changed more than we have.”

    Philly’s other burbs also have their own culture but don’t exhibit the level of outward pride I see in Delco. I asked Beaver if he had any theories.

    “Because they’re rich,” he said. “They’ve been desirable places for a long time. Delco was looked down on for a long time … and that makes people proud of it.”

    MacPherson agreed.

    “The pride comes from having a little bit of a chip on the shoulder,” he said.

    ‘By sheer force’

    It’s unclear when Delco was first used as a nickname for Delaware County, Pa., but embarrassingly, the first Delco reference I can find in The Inquirer’s archives was for a guest from Delco, N.Y. who checked into a Philadelphia hotel in 1860. (I don’t know why newspapers used to print hotel registries, aside from the act we’ve always been nosy little buggers.)

    In 1861, The Inquirer referenced a Del.co that appears to be the one in Pennsylvania, and I found subsequent Del.co references in our archives throughout the late 1800s. It’s only shortly after the turn of the 20th century that Delco seems to have come into regular use when referring to things and people from the suburban county.

    “There is the Delco Baseball League founded in 1908 and they still exist,” Beaver said.

    Delco is also a brand name. There’s ACDelco automotive parts (a remnant of Delco Electronics), Delco flatware, and Delco Foods, an Italian food distributor in Indiana. So there’s a minute possibility “Delco,” N.Y., could have been inspired to take its name from one of them.

    A “Smile You’re in Delco” sign greets the thirsty shoppers at 320 Market Cafe in Swarthmore.

    I even found an 1879 reference to a man named Delco in a crime blurb in The Inquirer:

    “ … In Cincinnati yesterday two men Jim Dermont, the cook, and Isadore Delco, a server in a Sixth Street restaurant, quarreled over the dignity of their respective positions, and Delco was badly stabbed.”

    I didn’t find a follow-up story but I have no doubt Delco survived the fight, because it always does — at least in Southeastern Pennsylvania.

    So to this phony flimflam “Delco” — bring it on. We’ve been around longer and we have more people, more pride, and more culture. Plus, as Philly sports fans and Delco residents, we have a chip on our shoulder bigger than a family bag of Herr’s.

    “Just by sheer force, we’re winning,” McElwee said.

  • PETA says Punxsutawney Phil should be a hologram. Gov. Shapiro says, ‘Don’t tread on me.’

    PETA says Punxsutawney Phil should be a hologram. Gov. Shapiro says, ‘Don’t tread on me.’

    As certainly as Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day awakes to “I Got You Babe” every morning at 6 a.m., every year around this time, PETA calls for Punxsutawney Phil to be retired to a sanctuary and replaced by some perennially preposterous proxy.

    Past Phil-ins suggested by PETA include: an animatronic groundhog, a giant gold coin, a vegan weather-reveal cake, persimmon seeds, and a 36-year-old woman named Amber Canavan from Portland, Ore., who volunteered herself as tribute to take Phil’s place, “livestream her monotonous life all year long, and give an equally unscientific weather forecast.”

    This year the animal-rights organization has offered to replace Phil with “a giant, state-of-the-art, 3D projection hologram of a groundhog” like he was Tupac Shakur.

    The best part of this proposal is that this year, PETA included an artistic rendering of its idea, which shows that if hologram Phil predicts six more weeks of winter, he will be blue and surrounded by snowflakes, and if he predicts an early spring, he will be pink and surrounded by flowers.

    Either way, this would be one mammoth marmot. Hologram Phil’s paws appear to be about the size of a human head, which, if you’ve ever encountered a groundhog in real life, is both an adorable and terrifying prospect.

    PETA even says the hologram would come “complete with vocal weather predictions,” which I also shudder to think about. Groundhogs sound like squeaky dog toys, which is perhaps not the best sound to rally a drunken crowd in a small Pennsylvania town at the crack of dawn.

    In response to the proposal, Gov. Josh Shapiro — a noted fan of Phil who’s hosted the wondrous whistle-pig at the governor’s residence and has attended Groundhog Day celebrations in Punxsutawney — posted a photo of Phil on X this week with the words “DONT TREAD ON ME.”

    I reached out to the Governor’s Office to see if Pennsylvania’s boss hog was serious about his support of the state’s famous groundhog.

    “He is indeed very serious about his defense of Phil,” Alex Peterson, a spokesperson for the Governor’s Office, told me.

    Prince or a pawn?

    PETA’s position, as stated in a letter from founder Ingrid Newkirk to Tom Dunkel, president of the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club’s Inner Circle, is that groundhogs are timid prey animals who want to avoid humans at all costs.

    “They dislike human smells, fear loud noises, abhor gatherings, and prefer to stay in their burrows,” Newkirk wrote. “Yet every year, this terrified little animal is subjected to loud announcers and noisy crowds and held up and waved around without any regard for his feelings, welfare, or instincts.”

    I see their point — Phil never particularly looks happy to predict the weather. Mostly he just seems confused at why he’s being asked to do so and what this life is all about.

    Punxsutawney Phil looks bewildered as he’s asked to predict the weather at Groundhog’s Day.

    Plus, there are plenty of other Groundhog Day traditions that happen in Pennsylvania and across the country without a real animal. At the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge in Southwest Philly, a puppet named Tinicum Tim pops out of the ground to predict the weather. In Reading, a bucktooth groundhog mascot with a fancy pink bow gives her prognostication atop the Reading Pagoda. And in Quarryville, a mounted taxidermy groundhog gives predictions from the top of a manure spreader called the “Pinnacle of Prognostication.”

    Michael Venos, who runs the website Countdown to Groundhog Day and has been to many of the alternative celebrations, said he considers the events “just as fun” and the “predictions just as valid.”

    Tinicum Tim, a groundhog puppet, predicts the weather during Groundhog Day festivities at the John Heinz Wildlife Refuge in 2024.

    Venos said he shares PETA’s concerns for Phil and all prognosticating animals.

    “While I’m sure in the past, the animals’ welfare was not the primary concern for the people who organize these events, I believe, and am trusting, that nowadays, the utmost care is being taken to make sure that the animals are safe and well cared for,” he said. “Punxsutawney Phil in particular seems to live a very cushy life and appears to be well taken care of.”

    The perks

    Phil lives one of the bougiest lives of any Pennsylvania resident, and who’s to say he woodchuck it all away, if given the choice?

    According to the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, there’s only ever been one Phil. He drinks a special “elixir of life” every summer, which has kept him young for going on 140 years. He does not, however, share that elixir with his wife or two kids, a burrowed secret that’s shadier than seeing your shadow on a cloudy day.

    When not predicting the weather, Phil lives with his family in a climate-controlled burrow in the town library, which is connected by underground tunnels to a brand-new home the Inner Circle had built for them last year at Gobbler’s Knob.

    Two homes and a secret underground tunnel network — in this economy?!? Lucky.

    Punxsutawney Phil is greeted by his adoring fans.

    Phil also finds time to travel and has his own party bus. As I mentioned before, he visited Shapiro at the governor’s residence in 2023, and this year, he attended the Pennsylvania Farm Show as a celebrity guest.

    I see both sides of the argument here, but given that our second-most famous groundhog in Pennsylvania is already computer-generated and heavily into gambling, I say we keep the real Phil around for now.

  • Will Shortz is moving the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament to Philadelphia

    Will Shortz is moving the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament to Philadelphia

    In nearly five decades of directing puzzle competitions, New York Times crossword editor and NPR puzzle master Will Shortz has encountered a cheater only once, at a Sudoku championship in Philadelphia.

    Luckily, Shortz doesn’t hold it against us. That came across loud and clear when he recently announced he’s moving the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament from Connecticut down to Philly next year.

    “Philadelphia has a cultured audience,” Shortz said when we spoke this week. “It’s just a great city to have a major literary event at.”

    The first time I heard of the ACPT was while watching Wordplay, a 2006 documentary about crossword puzzles featuring Shortz; the latter half of the movie is set at his annual tournament. I loved the movie when it came out and on a rewatch 20 years later, it’s still as quirky and delightful as ever.

    In the film, the late puzzle constructor Merl Reagle, who crafted crosswords for the Times, The Inquirer, and other papers across the country, calls the ACPT an “orgy of puzzling,” which is a fantastic phrase that I’m guessing he never got into a puzzle and one that’s probably responsible for the film’s perplexing PG rating.

    The play-by-play

    Shortz — who designed his own major in enigmatology (the study of puzzles) at Indiana University — founded the ACPT at the Marriott in Stamford, Conn., in 1978 when he was just 25.

    “There had not been a crossword tournament in the country since the 1930s, so we were starting fresh,” he said.

    The first tournament attracted 149 contestants. This year, there are 926 competitors, with a long wait list, and after 48 years at the Stamford Marriott (aside from a few years the tournament was held in Brooklyn), the ACPT has just outgrown the space. The tournament will be held there for the last time in April.

    Shortz and his team looked for new venues around the Northeast and settled on the Liberty Ballroom at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown, where they can accommodate up to 1,250 contestants.

    The tournament will be held there from April 30 to May 2 next year.

    “I’m hoping with 1,250 seats we won’t have to turn anyone away next year,” Shortz told me. “My goal is for everyone to come who wants to.”

    The ACPT is held over three days and consists of eight rounds of puzzles. All contestants compete in the first seven rounds, which, much to this Luddite’s delight, are still done with pencil and paper.

    “I want everyone to compete equally,” Shortz said. “Some people are very fast with their fingers so I wouldn’t want the tournament to depend on your computer literacy.”

    Contestants are scored based on accuracy and completion time. There are multiple divisions, with an eighth round of playoffs held for the top three divisions.

    From left: Frequent top finishers Tyler Hinman, David Plotkin, and Dan Feyer compete live on stage during a championship round of the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament. Play-by-play announcers even call the games, so competitors must wear noise-canceling headphones.

    The A and B division playoffs are held on stage, with top three contestants working on giant crossword puzzle white boards before a live audience (and you thought completing a Saturday Times puzzle by yourself was intimidating!). Play-by-play announcers even call the games, so competitors must wear noise-canceling headphones.

    The division A winner gets a $7,500 prize and crossword glory for a year. The last two tournaments were won by Paolo Pasco, a 24-year-old crossword puzzle constructor and seven-time Jeopardy! winner who’s competing in the quiz show’s Tournament of Champions this month.

    Aside from the competitive games, there are also informal word games, a puzzle market, and a contestant talent show.

    Paolo Pasco, (left), winner of the 2025 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament, with tournament director Will Shortz, (center), and puzzle constructor Ryan McCarty.

    ‘No judgments’

    Shortz has never missed a tournament, except for when it was canceled in 2020 due to COVID. Even after suffering a stroke in 2024, he showed up to the tournament, just two months later.

    “I was in a subacute rehab center and everyone was advising me not to leave the center, but there was no way I was going to miss the tournament,” he told me. “When I came in a wheelchair, everyone stood up and applauded and that brought tears to my eyes.”

    Donald Christensen, who has attended the ACPT since the 1980s and serves as the event photographer, said the contestants are “a microcosm of society.”

    “When you attend one of the tournaments, you are among a group of about 1,000 people who make no judgments about you or your abilities, and who are often very willing to share their secrets to successful solving with anyone who is interested,“ he said via email.

    Contestants work on solving puzzles at the Stamford Marriott during the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament.

    I enjoy crossword puzzles, but I’m absolutely terrible at them, so much so that I question my college majors (nonfiction writing and communications), my career, and whether I actually speak the English language. But there’s even room for someone like me at the tournament — a noncompetitor option, where you can play but your solutions aren’t scored. Spectator-only tickets are available for the Sunday playoffs, too.

    Contestants aren’t allowed outside help, but they’re not required to hand over their cellphones either. Shortz said referees would see any cheating and looking something up on a phone would just slow down a good contestant.

    “It’s not a group that would cheat anyway,” Shortz said.

    The Sudoku swindler

    And that brings me back to the stupefying Sudoku scandal of 2009. For three years beginning in 2007, The Inquirer sponsored the National Sudoku Championship at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, with Shortz serving as host (The Inquirer and Shortz also partnered to host the World Sudoku Championship here in 2010).

    Will Shortz explains the rules of the 2010 World Sudoku Championship, which was held in Philadelphia and sponsored by The Inquirer.

    During the 2009 competition, a before-unknown player, Eugene Varshavsky of Lawrenceville, N.J., qualified for the finals in lightning time. But when he got on stage with his hoodie up for the championship round, he froze.

    “It was a challenging puzzle but not crazy hard and he was utterly unable to finish it,” Shortz said. “It was kind of embarrassing for someone who’d solved the previous puzzle quickly.”

    Still, Varshavsky was awarded third place, which came with a $3,000 prize. But puzzlers raised suspicions and the money was frozen while officials conducted an investigation.

    Varshavsky was asked to come to The Inquirer to complete additional puzzles to prove his ability.

    “We gave him the round-three puzzle he whipped through in the competition, which he was now unable to do,” Shortz recalled.

    He was subsequently stripped of his title and the prize money. Shortz said officials believed he was getting help through an earpiece during the competition, though that was never proven. Coincidentally, a man by the same name was suspected of cheating in 2006 at the World Open chess championship in Philadelphia.

    United by words

    Philadelphia’s puzzle history isn’t all sordid though. We were home to the oldest known Times crossword puzzle contributor, the late Bernice Gordon, who constructed puzzles for decades and was the first centenarian to have a puzzle published in the Times.

    And in 2021, Soleil Saint-Cyr, 17, of Moorestown, became the youngest woman to have a puzzle published in the Times.

    Cruciverbalist Soleil Saint-Cyr poses at her Moorestown home in 2021.

    With all of the talk around AI today, I asked Shortz if humans are still better at crafting crossword puzzles than computers.

    “Of course, computers can create crosswords now, but it takes a human mind to create a brilliant crossword,” he said. “Only humans can still come up for a clever idea for a new theme and only a human can write a good, original crossword clue.”

    Perhaps there is no better place for the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament than right here in Philadelphia, where words birthed our country into existence. We’re still writing the story of our nation and trying to figure out if this puzzle can be solved, but as in Shortz’s tournament, people are still united by words and creating small moments of order amid the chaos.

    “We’re faced with so many challenges every day in life and we just muddle through and do the best we can and we don’t know if we have the best solution,” Shortz said. “But when you solve a crossword puzzle … it gives you a tremendous feeling of accomplishment. You put the world in order.”

    For more information on the ACPT and how to add your name to the 2027 contact list, visit crosswordtournament.com.

  • Federal prosecutors have requested documents tied to the Ellen Greenberg case, sources say

    Federal prosecutors have requested documents tied to the Ellen Greenberg case, sources say

    The U.S. Attorney’s Office is seeking documents and information from those connected to the case of Ellen Greenberg, whose 2011 death remains shrouded by questions about whether it was properly investigated by authorities, according to sources.

    The sources, who asked not to be identified, said federal prosecutors recently sent out subpoenas in the matter, and that the investigation does not appear to be focused on the manner of Greenberg’s 2011 death by 20 stab wounds — which was initially ruled homicide then switched to suicide. Instead, the sources said, the probe appears to be centered on questions about how a variety of agencies handled the case in the years after she died, and whether any of those missteps might amount to criminal corruption.

    Still, the scope of the potential inquiry was not clear Wednesday.

    Multiple city and state agencies have been involved in Greenberg’s case in the last 15 years, including the Philadelphia Police Department, the Philadelphia Medical Examiner’s Office, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, the Philadelphia Law Department, and the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office.

    Spokespeople for all of those city offices would neither confirm nor deny they have received subpoenas.

    A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office said they could “neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”

    Joseph Podraza Jr., the attorney for Greenberg’s parents, said he and his clients are “ecstatic.”

    “If that is in fact correct and accurate, that the federal government is going to investigate … this is exactly what we’ve wanted all along,” he said. “It’s unfortunate it’s taken more than seven years to get to this point but we are really grateful and thankful to the U.S. attorneys and, of course, are available to assist in any way we can in helping their investigation.”

    From homicide to suicide

    Ellen Greenberg and Samuel Goldberg in the kitchen of the Manayunk apartment they shared.

    Greenberg, 27, was found by her fiancé, Samuel Goldberg, in the kitchen of their Manayunk apartment with a 10-inch knife lodged four inches into her chest on Jan. 26, 2011.

    Investigators on the scene treated her death as a suicide because Goldberg told them the apartment door was locked from the inside and he had to break it down to get in. There were no signs of an intruder and Greenberg had no defensive wounds, police have said.

    During an autopsy the next morning, then-assistant medical examiner Marlon Osbourne noted a total of 20 stab wounds to Greenberg’s body, including 10 to the back of her neck, along with 11 bruises in various stages of healing, and ruled her death a homicide.

    By the time homicide investigators returned to the scene to conduct their investigation, the apartment was already professionally cleaned and electronic devices belonging to Greenberg had been removed by a member of Goldberg’s family.

    Shortly after the homicide ruling, police publicly disputed the findings, citing “mental issues” Greenberg may have had. Osbourne later changed his ruling to suicide, with no explanation to Greenberg’s parents, Joshua and Sandra.

    Greenberg was dealing with anxiety, had met with a psychiatrist, and was prescribed anti-anxiety and sleep aid medications. Her psychiatrist told police Greenberg felt overwhelmed at work, but “there was never any feeling of suicidal thoughts,” and according to the medical examiner’s investigation report at the time, there was nothing indicative of suicide found on Greenberg’s computers.

    She did not leave behind a note.

    The Greenbergs subsequently retained numerous independent forensic experts who have questioned authorities’ findings, as first detailed in a March 2019 Inquirer report.

    Ellen Greenberg’s parents, Joshua and Sandra, hold a photo album of their daughter.

    In their search for answers, the Greenbergs hired then-civil rights attorney Larry Krasner in 2012. He convened a meeting for the Greenbergs with police officials and the district attorney’s office in an effort to get the investigation reopened, but nothing happened, the Greenbergs said.

    When Krasner became district attorney in 2018, the Greenbergs reached out to see if he’d reopen the investigation. Krasner referred the matter to the state Attorney General’s Office, then helmed by now Gov. Josh Shapiro, to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest.

    Shapiro’s office had the case for more than a year. It was only when The Inquirer pressed the office for answers that Shapiro’s spokesperson at the time, Joe Grace (now spokesperson for Mayor Cherelle L. Parker), said in a 2019 statement that they had conducted a “thorough investigation,” the “evidence supports ‘Suicide’ as the manner of death,” and that the office had closed the investigation.

    Grace pointed to search history on Greenberg’s computer that included the search terms “suicide methods,” “quick suicide,” and “painless suicide.”

    When asked why the medical examiner’s 2011 report said nothing indicative of suicide was found on Greenberg’s computer, Grace said his office didn’t find the analysis in the file, so “we cannot say if anyone, police or prosecutor, ever looked at it.”

    The lawsuits

    Following the Attorney General Office’s review, the Greenbergs filed a lawsuit against the Medical Examiner’s Office and Osbourne in 2019 seeking to have the manner of their daughter’s death changed back to homicide or undetermined.

    The city law department fought to have the case dismissed and a lengthy appeals process followed. In the Commonwealth Court’s 2-1 decision in 2024, judges wrote they had “no choice under the law” but to grant the city’s appeal but added that “… this court is acutely aware of the deeply flawed investigation of the victim’s death by the City of Philadelphia Police Department (PPD) detectives, the City of Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office (DAO), and the MEO [Medical Examiner’s Office].”

    Ellen Greenberg

    While that case was ongoing, the Greenbergs filed a second suit in 2022, based on additional details about the case that came to light through the first suit, including new information about the process around how Greenberg’s death was classified.

    In the new suit, Podraza alleged the investigation into Greenberg’s death was “embarrassingly botched” and resulted in a “cover-up” by Philadelphia authorities. It sought monetary damages for intentional infliction of emotional distress.

    The city law department fought both suits until February, when Osbourne — the pathologist who initially ruled Greenberg’s death a homicide then switched it to suicide — signed a sworn statement saying he now believes her death should be categorized as something other than suicide.

    Within days, and shortly before the second case was to go to trial, the city offered to settle with the Greenbergs. The settlement included $650,000, which was paid, and an agreement that the Medical Examiner’s Office conduct an “expeditious” review of the manner of Greenberg’s 2011 death.

    Sandra and Joshua Greenberg

    As part of the settlement, the Greenbergs agreed to withdraw both of their lawsuits against the city. The first suit had been slated for a hearing before the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania last year.

    In October, Philadelphia Chief Medical Examiner Lindsay Simon delivered her review of the case, in which she said she discovered 20 additional bruises and three additional “perforations in the skin” never before documented on Greenberg’s body, raising the total number of bruises to 31 and stab wounds to 23, up from 20.

    Simon concluded that Greenberg “would be capable of inflicting these injuries herself,” and that her death “is best classified as ‘Suicide.’”