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My neighbor’s rowhome Christmas lights shine directly into my bedroom. What should I do?
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My neighbor’s rowhome Christmas lights shine directly into my bedroom. What should I do?

When the neighborglow is too bright.

By

Evan Weiss

,

Zoe Greenberg

, and

Jason Nark

Published Dec 6, 2025

This week I have asked two reporters to help answer a holiday question — is the asker reasonable or a Grinch?

Have your own thoughts or other questions? Fill in the box at the end!

.inno-chat__body {
border-radius: 12px;
}

Evan Weiss

Deputy Features Editor

The question is… My neighbor's rowhome Christmas lights shine directly into my bedroom. What should I do?

Jason Nark

Life & Culture Reporter

My first instinct, perhaps because it's Christmas, is to let it pass, to take one for the season.

Zoe Greenberg

Life & Culture Reporter

I say close the curtains? Put on your eye mask. It's the holidays.

Jason Nark

But, I do have strong feelings about light.

Jason Nark

Light pollution, for one. The new, pervasive, blinding white lights make the world look like a dental office. The amount of lights on in urban office/tall buildings at night, which contributes to bird deaths. I'm a light weirdo.

Zoe Greenberg

I'm also anti-bird death!!!

Zoe Greenberg

I will say that my partner is always trying to have the indoor lights match the outside night sky, which means that in the winter he wants it very dark inside our home. And I long for light.

Evan Weiss

So your lights are off around 4:30??

Zoe Greenberg

If he could choose, that's what would happen.

Jason Nark

My hometown recently installed new streetlamps that are too tall and far too bright. If I lived closer to one, and they didn't do anything about it, there might be sabotage.

Zoe Greenberg

The neighbor's lights are not going to last too long.

Zoe Greenberg

Should we be worried about your sabotaging your neighbor's beautiful Christmas lights?

Jason Nark

No, I give Christmas lights a pass because they're usually less intrusive and dimmer, and temporary.

Jason Nark

I will say that it's smart to invest in timers.

Evan Weiss

I think unless you really can't sleep, you have to deal with it.

Evan Weiss

Part of living in a city is accommodating your community. If you want no light, no noise, there are plenty of parts of Pennsylvania where the bears will welcome you.

Zoe Greenberg

Very true. Or rocks in the ocean.

Evan Weiss

You're exiling the neighbor to the sea?

Zoe Greenberg

I just mean if they don't want any lights! In the darkest season when light brings happiness and joy!!

Jason Nark

I wouldn't want my neighbor to have one of those Christmas "shows." I think that would be too much. Someone in Milford, Pa. was charged for cutting Christmas lights a few years back. She thought they were too much.

Evan Weiss

Any last advice for the question asker?

Zoe Greenberg

Maybe bake the neighbor some cookies and wish them a happy holidays.

Jason Nark

Or get blackout curtains.

This conversation has been edited for length.

What other Very Philly Questions should we address?

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December 6, 2025
Eggs belong at breakfast, not on Patullo’s house | Weekly Report Card
Eagles fans egging Kevin Patullo’s house: F

Listen — Philly has a reputation. We know this. We wear it like a badge. We boo Santa, we heckle refs, we meltdown on WIP like it’s an Olympic sport. But there’s passion, there’s unhinged, and then there’s driving to Moorestown at 3 a.m. to egg the offensive coordinator’s house because the Eagles lost to the Bears.

That’s not passion. That’s just loser behavior.

Patullo said all the right things this week. That criticism is part of the job, that he’s been here five years, that he loves the city and the fans. But he also made it clear: When it involves your family, the line isn’t just crossed… it’s obliterated. And he’s right. Yell at the TV, tweet about it, call WIP at 6 a.m. pretending to be “Bryce from Bridesburg.” But families are off-limits.

The good news? Neighbors rallied, the community reached out, and Patullo isn’t going anywhere — not from his home, and not from the sidelines (despite Nick Foles’ dream of him coaching from the booth like it’s Madden franchise mode).

Philly can take a joke, a hit, and a heartbreak season. What we can’t take is letting a few clowns make us look like we egg coaches every time the offense ranks 24th in yards.

Save the eggs for tailgates. Or better yet, breakfast.

A cheesesteak from Dalessandro’s in Philadelphia, on Friday, Nov. 21, 2025. Michelin recently recognized the restaurant with a Bib Gourmand. Cheesesteak restaurants Angelo’s and Del Rossi’s were also recognized by Michelin.

Philly is America’s No. 1 foodcation destination: A (obviously)

A new national survey says the top city Americans want to visit just for food is… Philadelphia. Not New York. Not Chicago. Not Texas’ brisket country. Philly.

All because of one thing: the cheesesteak, which topped the national list with 27% of Americans saying it’s their dream domestic “foodcation.” Translation: People are now booking vacations around a sandwich we buy at 1 a.m. like it’s no big deal.

Food & Wine says Americans spend about $910 on their typical food-focused trip and would nearly double that budget if the bite was bucket-list–worthy. So somewhere out there is a family justifying a $2,000 vacation to stand outside Angelo’s at 10 a.m. behind 70 locals who think they have “a system.”

Meanwhile, New York tied us at 27% for pizza — but let’s be serious. A cheesesteak beating out an entire city’s worth of pizza is so Philly-coded it should count as a parade.

A Waymo car drives down Market Street Tuesday, July 8, 2025, in Philadelphia.

Waymo’s self-driving taxis hit Philly: B-

Waymo has officially begun testing its robo-taxis in Philly — which raises the obvious question: Have they seen our streets?

The company says its cars are now driving autonomously (with a human babysitter for now), mapping our neighborhoods and “laying the groundwork” to eventually chauffeur actual Philadelphians around.

Bold. Truly bold. Because sure, a driverless car can operate in Phoenix. But can it:
- Identify a pothole before it becomes a crater?
- Handle a double-parked Amazon van, a food truck, and a guy pushing a sofa on a hand truck… all in the same block?
- Not get stolen? (It’s Philly. We have statistics.)
City officials say they’re “monitoring the situation,” which is Philly-speak for: If this thing blocks a SEPTA bus, there will be consequences. Meanwhile, Waymo has been chatting with local groups — the Bicycle Coalition, Best Buddies — which is smart, because they’ll need all the friends they can get once these cars try to merge on I-95.

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Delco Donny turning Wawa parking lots into concert venues: A

Only in the Greater Philadelphia region could a man with a guitar, a thick Delco accent, and a dream turn random Wawa parking lots into 100-person pop-up concerts — and somehow it feels… correct.

“Delco Donny,” the alter ego of musician Jake Dillon, started as a joke for his girlfriend’s Delco mom, reported Philly Voice. Now he’s pulling six-figure TikTok views by belting out Oasis, the Killers, and “Creep” between parked Hyundais and people sprinting inside for Sizzlis. At his Boothwyn Wawa show, fans were literally acting like he was Noah Kahan, except with more vowels flattened and more hoodies with paint stains.

The shtick is simple: He shows up, leans into the Delco accent America learned during Mare of Easttown, and sings like he’s headlining the Spectrum in 1996. And people eat it up. Wawa corporate even started sending him merch, which is basically the Delco version of getting knighted.

There’s something kind of pure about it: a Northeast Philly native channeling a fictional Boothwyn legend who meditates in a cluttered van, reviews local pizza joints, and humbly accepts Marlboro Reds as offerings from the people. The man is doing character work in a gas-station parking lot, and somehow it feels like local folklore in the making.

Opera Philadelphia hosted “Home for the Holidays” at the Wanamaker Building’s Grand Court on Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2025.

The Wanamaker Christmas comeback: A

In the most Philadelphia plot twist imaginable, the Wanamaker Grand Court took what could’ve been a gut punch — Macy’s closing, holiday traditions dangling by a thread — and turned it into a full-blown victory lap complete with a wreath-wearing Wanamaker Eagle, opera singers, dinosaur dancers, and an organ flex so powerful it could rattle the Market-Frankford Line.

“Home for the Holidays,” Opera Philadelphia’s one-night takeover, wasn’t just a concert, it was a statement. Philly looked at a soon-to-be shuttered space and said, Fine, then we’re going out in style. The whole night doubled as a nostalgia bomb: marching-toy projections for anyone who remembers buying Christmas presents in the old store, an audience gasping at the tree like it was 1978 again, and the ground-shaking Wanamaker Organ.

But the real Philly heart came from the subtext: This was also a campaign to keep the space public, alive, and musical long after renovations. You don’t raise $1 million for a Pipe Up! series unless you’re gearing up for a fight.

Philly is getting a cruise terminal again (!!): A-

For the first time since 2011, cruise ships will actually leave from the Philadelphia region — not Baltimore, not Bayonne pretending to be New York. Right next to PHL, on the Delco side of the river.

PhilaPort struck a deal with Norwegian Cruise Line, building a new terminal in Tinicum Township with 41 voyages already on the books over the next two years, reported 6ABC. Norwegian’s locked in through 2033, sending thousands to Bermuda, the Bahamas, Canada, and New England, all sailing straight out of the airport’s backyard.

It’s a major comeback for a region that hasn’t had a real cruise hub in more than a decade, and the timing couldn’t be better with the 250th, the World Cup, and the All-Star Game all landing next year. Economic impact? Around $300 million annually. Jobs? More than 2,100.

And yes, it’s a six-hour ride down the Delaware before you hit the Atlantic. Philly’s response: New York isn’t much faster, Baltimore is way slower. So grab a drink and enjoy the shoreline.

Franklin Mall, previously known as Franklin Mills, is for sale again.

Franklin Mills (sorry, “Franklin Mall”) is officially for sale: C

Franklin Mills, the place where Northeast Philly teens found Hot Topic, freedom, and an alarming amount of Orange Julius, is officially on the market. Again. After years of falling occupancy, collapsing value, and visitor counts dropping from 20 million a year in the ’90s to 5.6 million today, it’s basically being lilsted as: “137 acres… willing to become literally anything.”

Industrial redevelopment? Sure. Warehousing? Probably. Housing? Maybe, if City Council blesses it. A mall again? As one architect put it: “Unlikely.” (Philly translation: absolutely not.)

This place is 1.8 million square feet (second only to King of Prussia), but while KOP is still the superstar of malls, Franklin Mills slowly slid into its “legacy act” phase. The valuation dropped from $370 million in 2007 to $76 million last year. Even the name had to be changed back because Simon Property Group kept the Mills trademark, which feels like getting your hoodie taken in a breakup.

Real talk: The building is basically a demolition project waiting for a permit. But to its credit, 65% occupancy means it isn’t a ghost town yet — just a mall trying to remember who it used to be.

It might become warehouses, apartments, or over a million square feet of “don’t worry, it’ll create jobs.” But one thing’s for sure: If Northeast Philly wakes up to find a sea of Amazon vans where Franklin Mills once stood, people will still call it Franklin Mills.

And honestly? Same.
December 6, 2025
Harlow’s Still Here

In the spring of 1972, an elegant woman wearing a white Halston jumpsuit and carrying a silver fox coat asked her driver to stop at the corner of Chestnut and Bank Streets in Old City.

A line of people extended around the corner and all the way up to the front door of the city’s hottest new nightclub. When they spotted her, they erupted into applause and started chanting her name.

With the kind of theatrical instincts only a former model and onetime drag queen could have, she sashayed down the alley dragging her fur coat behind her, past all the cheering would-be patrons and into the club that bore her name: Harlow’s.

It’s a name that has been spelled out in lights, emblazoned in headlines, and even plastered on billboards, announcing, and in some cases, denouncing the woman who danced with Sharon Tate at the Cannes Film Festival, dazzled Truman Capote (who named her one of the most beautiful women of the 20^th century in Answered Prayers), acted with Jack Nicholson, and turned down Warhol.

Harlow was a transgender woman and a glamour bomb the likes of which Philadelphia had never seen — but the city always understood her as one of our own; “Marlene Dietrich by way of Broad and Tasker,” as one Inquirer profile put it in 1972.

Now, after living in privacy for years, Rachel Billebault, once known around the world as Harlow, is finally ready to tell her story.

“I always said ‘no,’ whenever someone contacted me,” she says. But when we reached out to her two years ago, asking if we could work with her to write her memoirs, she changed her mind.

“Time was running out,” she says. “There were too many things left unsaid. If not me, then who else?”

Rachel Harlow at Cannes in 1967.

From the streets of South Philly, an icon is born

These days, the former queen of nightlife is known by her neighbors in the Greater Northeast as a sweet — and still quite beautiful — senior lady who mostly keeps to herself.

The only thing to indicate her former high-style life is her insistence on maintaining it.

“I’m always the best-dressed woman at the Acme,” she says.

As a teenager growing up on Juniper Street between Tasker and Morris in South Philadelphia, however, she would slip out the back door with just a light touch of lipstick on her face, love beads around her neck, her platinum blond hair lightly teased and coiffed. Walking down the alley behind her house, she’d make her way to the Broad Street Line to travel “into town” to meet her friends in Rittenhouse Square.

It was better that way. The neighbors sitting on their front steps wouldn’t see her leave and her parents, Joe and Rose Finocchio, wouldn’t have to explain her appearance. To everyone in the neighborhood, she was known by the male name she was given at birth, recognized by the boy clothes she’d been forced to wear her whole life, even if they whispered about her high voice and winsome mannerisms.

“A South Philly unicorn,” is how she remembers herself then. “A little fawn on two legs, just trying to get my feet under me.”

Her parents were remarkably accepting, although they constantly worried what the neighbors would think. There was the occasional slur, which always instantly got slapped down by her family or some protective wiseguys, but for the most part, the close-knit Italian American community left her alone.

To hear her tell it, half the families on the block had someone who was “a little bit that way.”

Rittenhouse Square had been a late-night gathering spot for discreet gay men going back to at least the 1930s, but by the early ‘60s, it had also become a haven for LGBTQ+ kids and the counterculture, who were each decidedly less discreet. She made lifelong friends there.

“They were the first people in my life who never asked me why my voice was so high or why my eyelashes were so long,” she recalled years later, her voice cracking in gratitude.

She was 18 on Halloween night 1966 when her cousin Billy all but forced her into entering her first drag pageant at the L&M Ballroom at 69^th and Market. She won, and Harlow (named after the ’30s screen siren) was born.

Soon, she was entering — and winning — every drag contest in the city. Eventually, she made her way to New York, where she won the Miss Camp All America pageant in 1967, and was sent to Cannes to promote Frank Simon’s groundbreaking documentary about the pageant, The Queen. There, she dined with Capote and Orson Welles and danced with Tate in matching silver minidresses.

She spent a year in Hollywood. Director Henry Jaglom cast her in his 1971 film A Safe Place, starring Nicholson and Welles, which would make Harlow one of the earliest out transgender women to play a cisgender woman on film.

But when her onetime dance partner Tate was murdered, Harlow knew it was time to go.

“If they were killing girls like her, imagine what they’d do to a girl like me,” she says now.

Jack Nicholson and Rachel Harlow at “A Safe Place” movie premier.

A hometown hero returns

In 1971, she returned to Philadelphia, a city that loves nothing more than a hometown hero who comes back after conquering the world. That year, Philadelphia magazine ran a piece on her titled “Local Boy Makes Good,” detailing her exploits in Hollywood and glamorous run-ins with celebrities, along with a seven-page spread of Harlow modeling the latest women’s fashions around town.

To be transgender in the 1970s for most was to be invisible or under constant threat, although attitudes were generally less aggressive about it than the politicized atmosphere of today.

Coverage of trans people tended to skew toward a smirking sense of wonder or fear at the marvels of modern medicine.

Harlow had two tools at her disposal that she discovered early in her life and utilized for the rest of it.

“I was beautiful, if you don’t mind my saying, and no one could argue that I wasn’t a woman.”

Rachel Harlow on Aug. 22, 1973, promoting a television appearance. “I always wore that gold bracelet around my wrist. I still have it to this day,” she says now. “It’s an 18 karat gold bracelet with diamond and ruby clasp. It’s like a horse bit. It was a gift and I’ve always loved it.”

She was thin, white, blond, and blue-eyed, which means she more or less embodied the beauty ideal of the early ‘70s, as seen in everything from Vogue covers to The Brady Bunch. And to be a trans woman perceived as naturally feminine in the traditional mode, to be able to live as a woman effortlessly without the fear of others’ reactions, lent her a privilege that made her path an easier one than many trans women were facing at the time.

“I could have gone anywhere and lived my life without anyone knowing my story,” she says. “But I stayed in Philadelphia and told it to anyone who would listen.”

That meant she suffered from being misgendered and deadnamed in the press, and being the target of headlines (some recounted in this article) that would seem jarring and offensive today — but it also meant she was elevated as a leading light of the city rather than as a curiosity or worse, a freak. For the rest of her time in the public eye, she would model for fashion spreads in local media like The Inquirer, alongside Main Line socialites, anchorwomen, and politicians’ wives.

Rachel Harlow at the Halston fashion show at the Belleview Stratford Hotel.

At only 21, she became a fixture in the early ‘70s nightlife scene, bouncing back and forth between the bars and clubs of Center City and the inns and lounges of New Hope, causing a commotion everywhere she went.

“I can’t emphasize what it did for business, because when she would walk through that restaurant, conversations stopped,” said Ron Dubree, a friend from her Rittenhouse Square days, who owned the Mountainside Inn in New Hope. “I mean, people would turn and look. She was that stunning.”

Was it common for trans women to go out to mainstream establishments at the time?

“It wasn’t common for transsexuals to go anywhere at the time,” she asserts. “But I went into those places because I had no fear about being accepted.”

One night while standing in line with several girlfriends outside a club in Center City, she was approached by the club’s owner, a man named Stanley “Bo” Rosenbleeth.

“The first thing Bo said was, ‘You should never wait in line in your life,’” she recalls. When she left a couple of hours later, Rosenbleeth pressed his card into her hand: “Your name should be in lights,” she remembers him saying.

Rosenbleeth, who died in 2017, had opened a string of successful restaurants and clubs throughout Center City: everything from a banjo bar to a 1920s gangster-themed restaurant that staged fake shootouts. Sensing the coming trends, he was looking to open the best discotheque Philadelphia had ever seen.

He knew he could build a nightlife brand entirely around Harlow.

As he put it to The Inquirer in 1972, “I saw her as a person other people respond to.”

Harlow’s Nightclub in 1972.

The birth of Harlow’s

Rosenbleeth picked a spot on Bank Street in Old City, in the block between Second and Third and Market and Chestnut. It was a savvy choice for a lot of reasons, not least being the nascent restaurant renaissance that would come to define Philadelphia in the 1970s. The Middle East, La Truffe, H.A. Winston, and other highly popular restaurants had opened in the previous few years in the neighborhood.

It would also turn out to be a smart choice because of its proximity to what was then the KYW-TV studios at Fifth and Market Streets, where Mike Douglas was hosting a constant string of world-class celebrities five days a week.

“Harlow the Hollywood He-She is Coming!” is how The Inquirer first reported plans for the soon-to-be-opened club in January 1972. When Harlow’s opened in March, it was an instant hit, prompting breathless coverage in the city’s society and scene columns, at a time when Philadelphia had enough daily and weekly newspapers to support over a dozen full-time columnists, documenting the movements and drama of the city’s celebrity circuit.

Harlow’s suddenly became the place to be seen by all of the people most interested in being seen.

“We had city councilmen, news anchors, socialites, drag queens, and mafiosos all on the same dance floor and they were all there, goofing on me,” she remembers, using a ’60s slang term to convey that she was the center of attention.

The pin for the Rachel Harlow Club.

The pin was used to designated VIPs at the club. It features Harlow’s face, butterfly wings, and a dangling “H” at the bottom.

The club was three stories of dancing, drinking, and mingling spaces done up in a mid-century futuristic style that took its inspiration from A Clockwork Orange, all mirrors and modular furniture.

The Sunday Bulletin made it sound deliciously like Sodom and Gomorrah with a cover charge. “The orange ceiling lights barely cut through the smoke. In their hot mists, the bodies twist and writhe as if on an invisible griddle. And the music — The Rolling Stones are blasting their ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ — crashes into your ears at 110 decibels.

“And there’s no doubt who’s the high priestess of this orgiastic bell-bottom cult. Harlow. A head like Queen Nefertiti, ashen mane tossing in the lights … half-mannequin and half-deer.”

Every night, Rachel would ascend the spiral staircase in front of the entire club, usually in her signature white, which stood out like a beacon in the club’s lighting.

“In those days I wore my hair of my face a lot because my mother loved it,” Harlow says now. She suspects the photo was taken at a party at Carpenter Bacheholder’s Delancey Street home.

“Everybody wanted to have a drink with me. Everybody wanted to talk with me. Everybody wanted to dance with me. It was fabulous, but it was exhausting,” she remembers.

Philadelphia was going through a cultural renaissance in the 1970s. The Bicentennial was on the horizon and the city had star-spangled itself from one end to the next in preparation. Super producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff were defining R&B music through their Philadelphia International Records label, in the period between the dominance of Motown and the explosion of the disco era. Entertainment venues like the Latin Casino in Cherry Hill or the Valley Forge Music Fair brought a steady string of world-class celebrities through town, and Mike Douglas was more than happy to host them and any other superstars he could book.

Elton John would have a hit singing about “Philadelphia Freedom” and an obscure actor named Sylvester Stallone was about to make the steps of the Art Museum as iconic as the Eiffel Tower.

And every celebrity who ever spent a night in Philadelphia in the early ‘70s partied at Harlow’s.

“Truman [Capote] came to the club at least a half-dozen times. He and Halston would come in from New York just to see me and cause a little trouble,” she says now. “God only knows what they got up to after hours.”

Her duties as the hostess of the club that bore her name were only vaguely defined, but they all amounted to “Just be Harlow in the most public way possible.”

“Part of what Bo wanted me to do was be a woman around town. He believed in spreading the wealth, so people might see me at La Panetière or Jeanine et Janine having dinner and it made everybody want to go to Harlow’s. So I was out and about a lot. And then after leaving Harlow’s I would go to one of the after-hour gay bars. What can I say? I was living a life.”

A Rachel Harlow hair ad in Philadelphia Magazine for Scissor’s Edge salon.

“These ran in Philadelphia Magazine once a month for a year and a half,” she remembers.

Joe Greco was an old Rittenhouse Square pal who featured her in ads for his Society Hill salon Scissors Edge. “Whenever she walked into my salon,” he recalled, “The whole place would go dead silent. Whenever she walked out, half the women asked for her cut.”

Her stylish wardrobe was supplied through an allowance from Rosenbleeth and old Rittenhouse Square connections with a phalanx of gay men who ran the city’s many chic boutiques and department stores. She modeled clothes on the main floor of Wanamakers, an influencer 40 years before the word was coined.

“I couldn’t even go into Bonwit Teller without lines forming in those days!” she says of the fervor. “People would wait outside to get a look at me in the light, wondering, ‘Could it be possible?’ Well it was — and I was.”

Rachel Harlow in this October 29, 1972 Inquirer photo.

“This was taken by one of your photographers — this wasn’t a planned thing,” Harlow remembers. “It was a winter day, and as you see I look the worse for wear because I probably had a long night before, it was very early in the morning, and it was blustery. It’s one of my favorite pictures. It’s so feminine, so beautiful and early morning — I was probably going to Day’s Deli on 18 and Spruce to have my coffee and croissant.”

A highly publicized procedure

One day, when they were still in the planning stages of the club, Rosenbleeth picked her up in his car and presented Harlow with a silver fox coat, a briefcase with $10,000 in cash inside, and a card with a stork on the front that read “Congratulations! It’s a girl!”

She finally had the money to complete her transition, something she’d been dreaming of since the day she was 16 and standing in her parents’ living room, clutching a copy of a magazine featuring 1950s transgender pioneer Christine Jorgensen and telling them “This is me.”

Harlow threw her arms around Bo and wept.

At a time when most transgender women were being forced into the margins of society, considered unemployable, and often had difficulty finding places to live, Harlow’s gender confirmation surgery was announced in the papers; not as something freakish but as the latest news about one of the city’s most prominent people.

“Harlow, this city’s resident movie and nightclub personality, has undergone a sex change,” the Philadelphia Daily News reported in June of 1972. The article, titled “Harlow ‘Couldn’t Be Happier’ At Sex Change,” goes on.

“‘It costs $3500,’ she said, ‘But it’s worth $35 million.’ The operation that transformed Harlow from a Mr. to a Ms. was performed two weeks ago at Yonkers Professional Hospital in New York. ‘I went in on a Monday and they operated on Tuesday,’ said Harlow, who was in the hospital eight days. ‘I was a little frightened,” she admitted, ‘But it really wasn’t that painful. All I had was discomfort. I’m still a little sore,’ she said, ‘But I feel fine now. I’m just a little weak.’”

She was still legally known by her given name and put her South Philly connections to work. “My family had a friend in the neighborhood who was a judge and he took care of my name change and getting my birth certificate changed to reflect my gender,” she recalls.

To her friends, family, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, she was now Rachel Finocchio. But the press never stopped referring to her as Harlow, and for two decades, Rachel said yes to any talk show, from national to local, that invited her on to explain her existence.

Within a city that prizes authenticity, she says, her frankness was rewarded.

“Never an unkind word. Never a problem. Never had anybody confronting me in my club or saying, ‘How dare you?’ or ‘You’re an abomination.’ Nothing,” she says now.

Still, she was frequently asked intrusive questions about her anatomy or dumb ones about whether her surgery hurt. In the club, she tried to avoid slow dances with patrons because it was obvious some of them were trying to determine whether they “believed” her.

She recalls that one of the club’s vendors demanded a dance on opening night and held her so tightly “he was practically behind me.” Afterward, he sat down and said loudly to his wife, “There’s no [expletive] way that’s a guy.”

Rachel Harlow and Jack Kelly (second from right) at a charity event to benefit Cystic Fibrosis research on April 2, 1973.

“I think this was at Saks Fifth Avenue on the Main Line. All the football players were there. I loved the fact that I had a three piece suit on — I happen to like women in suits and ties. And Jack was always very well put together.”

When Harlow met Jack

One night, when Harlow was wearing a backless Halston gown, she felt someone touch the small of her back. It was Councilman-at-Large John B. Kelly Jr.

Jack Kelly was the city’s golden boy; the handsome scion of the Kelly family, an Olympic bronze medalist whose father was a gold medalist and the founder of Kelly For Brickwork, and whose sister Grace was a movie star and a bona fide princess. Kelly frequented Harlow’s semiregularly.

“I would see him there, but we never spoke to each other, just nodded from across the room. Believe me, I noticed him every time. Oh, God. That jawline?”

The Kelly family at home in Ocean City, NJ. From left, Lizanne, Grace, Margaret (Peggy) and Jack (John). Photo dates from the late 1940’s when Lizanne was in her early teens.

Their meeting remains vivid in her memory:

“Hello, Rachel,” she remembers Kelly saying. “Hello, Jack,” she responded, in the manner of two well-known people who don’t actually know each other. When he asked her to dance, she said, “Oh, no, Jack. I don’t think that’s a good idea at all. What will all these people think?”

But to hear Harlow tell it, Kelly didn’t care. He whisked her off to the dance floor in front of hundreds of people as an upbeat song played. “I never would have gone out there if it had been a slow song,” she recalls.

Rosenbleeth, looking out over a room full of attention-seekers, gossips, and media personalities, knew a good story when he saw one and immediately signaled to the DJ to play a slower song: “Me and Mrs. Jones” by Billy Paul. As the opening notes of the latest from the Gamble and Huff studio pealed out over the crowd, Rachel panicked, but Kelly took charge.

“He pulled me closer, and he was a very strong man, let me say. He held the small of my back. So firmly, not tight, not like a grasp, but … I had never felt anything like that in my life,” she says now, her breath catching.

“I can also tell you that when we slow-danced to that song, the dance floor cleared out. We had it all to ourselves. It was spectacular.”

She grows wistful when she speaks of him, sometimes unable to finish the thought because the emotions overwhelm. “His breath, on my neck … Unbelievable.”

They bonded over their identity struggles, hers as a trans woman and his as the son of a prominent father and the brother of the ultimate overachieving sister. For their first date, he took her to a popular restaurant in Narberth called Gatsby’s, where he had recently been crowned “Lord Chamberlain of the Gatsby Redcoats,” a sort of Main Line version of the Shriners. He made the rounds, eagerly introducing her to friends and colleagues while he worked the room.

“After we sat down, he held my hand, and said to me ‘Rachel, look how everyone loves you. Look at all you’ve done. Everybody respects you.’ And then he said something that told me everything about him: ‘I, on the other hand, have always been Grace Kelly’s brother or John Kelly’s son.’ He loved that I was a success in my own life; that I had done what I wanted instead of what people expected,” she says.

John M. Taxin, far right, greets actress Grace Kelly, left, and her brother Jack, center, at the Old Original Bookbinder’s restaurant in Philadelphia, Pa., in this undated photo.

Rachel had avoided sex for as long as she could, but she knew she’d finally met the man who was going to help her cross that threshold. She was only six months post surgery and had frantic visions of her hard-fought body reacting to the stress of sex like a windup clock in a cartoon. “It sounds silly, but I kept picturing springs and screws popping out!” She laughs now, but it was a genuine fear for the young woman; an unfounded one, as it turns out.

She recounts that Kelly was patient and so tender, she still cries softly talking about it decades later. “You can’t imagine what it meant to me,” she says through tears.

He squired her all over the city to fundraisers at the Union League, Eagles games at the Vet, and dinner parties with the city’s leading citizens. Her nervousness each time was met with the realization that they were all excited to meet her. “It was hard to escape the impression that he loved showing me off.”

On her 24th birthday, The Inquirer reported on a party at the club in her honor.

“Many came bearing gifts, but Harlow said her favorite present was a diamond ring from a guy whose identity she concealed.“

Today she reveals, “Everyone knew it was from Jack, but I didn’t think it was a good idea to brag about it.”

“When he gave me the ring, I said, ‘Jack … a ring box? What is this? I’m afraid to open it.’ And I opened it and, I mean, come on, the man’s giving you a diamond ring. I said, ‘Oh Jack, is this a brother and sister competition? She marries the prince and you want to marry a queen?’ And the smile that came on his face. He just hugged me, and I said, ‘Thank you very much for the gift’ and that was that.”

Harlow and Kelly were happy, and to hear her tell it, in love, but beauty, charm, and influence were shields for her for only so long. There were limits to how much certain people could accept.

Kelly had plans to challenge Mayor Frank Rizzo in the forthcoming election, and Rizzo wasn’t going down without a fight. “If Jack lands the official nod, the “Citizens to Re-Elect the Mayor” already have a billboard campaign planned. The signs will read: “Do We Really Need Rachel Harlow as a First Lady?” said the Philadelphia Daily News on Jan. 27, 1975.

At the same time, The Inquirer reported that Jack’s mother Margaret Kelly made inquiries about Rachel to friends and threatened to permanently withhold donations to the party if Democratic leaders showed her son any support. There were rumors that she threatened to disinherit her son if he continued on his present course.

“Jack called it the ultimate betrayal,” Rachel remembers.

Amid all that stress, the relationship ended. “It was lovely and then we just went our separate ways,” she sums up simply, even as she acknowledges him as one of her great loves.

When pressed, she simply says: “Listen, in this life, you have to learn to let go of things.”

Rachel Harlow in a promotional photo for the opening of Harlow’s Nighclub in 1972 in an Oscar de la Renta velvet and chiffon dress.

Out of the spotlight

In 1975, tired of all the feverish scrutiny, she walked out of Harlow’s for good. “There always comes a time with me where I have to retreat to my solitude, draw the curtains and just be with myself,” is how she explains it.

“Transsexuality is a solitary life. You have to come to the truth of who you are on your own, you have to stand up on your own and say it out loud, you have to go through that physical process, and you have to withstand the judgment of others. If you’re not right with yourself, you’ll never survive.”

There were other nightclubs that bore her name after that and there were other love stories, many of which continued to make the papers. She preferred to date men from the area because she never had to have an uncomfortable conversation with anyone about her story. “They all dated me knowing exactly who I was.”

In 1980, she met a courtly French pastry chef named Gerard Billebault; they married in 1981. For a decade she enjoyed a quiet home life hosting their friends and being a stepmother. She returned to the spotlight when she and her husband opened a million-dollar supper club, Harlow’s at The Bourse, in 1989.

That was the opening at Harlow’s at the Bourse Building,” Rachel says of this Dec. 1988 photo. “I invited 180 people. 1400 people came.”

But running it proved prohibitively expensive and the strain of a public life caused them to eventually separate. She withdrew from the spotlight permanently in the early ‘90s and returned to the Juniper Street house to take care of her ailing mother after a stroke.

“I got tired of answering the same questions over and over again,” she says now. “I don’t think anyone should be in the public eye forever.”

Rachel Harlow in this April 14, 1989 Inquirer photo.

Happily ever Harlow

Rachel now lives in a little house on a quiet street in Northeast Philadelphia, where she’s mostly kept to herself.

There is little left to indicate the dazzling life she once led. The Halston gowns, the silver fox fur, the hundreds of pairs of shoes, even the drag pageant crowns, they’ve all been given away. She gave the ring back to Kelly before they parted, despite his insistence that she keep it. Her old club is now a youth hostel, which delights her.

At 77, she is still beautiful and stylish; never stepping out without a fully made-up face and perfectly coiffed hair. She still gets dressed to the nines and goes out every now and then to Knock, the Gayborhood piano bar, owned by her dear friend Bill Wood and run by an attentive staff who dote on her. A Francesco Scavullo portrait of her remains permanently ensconced on the piano.

“Look, I have my friends, I see my remaining family members when I can, and I go out for a good time frequently. I enjoy the company of people when I want, on my terms,” she says. “I’m living exactly the life I want for myself at this time.”

Exterior of her former club at 32 S Bank street in Philadelphia on Nov. 26, 2025.

She loves to tell a story that gets to the heart of just how she’s survived for so long, from the period just before she went to Cannes and lived in New York. “I went to Max’s Kansas City one night, very much not my scene I should add, and I was told that Andy Warhol was in the back room and wanted me to join him,” she says.

Warhol had been one of the judges of the pageant in The Queen and had become intrigued by her. When she approached his table, she noted that most of his entourage seemed pretty strung out. “Candy Darling was face down, practically in her soup! I said, ‘No, thank you,’ and got out of there.” To this day, she’s proud to tell people that she’s “the girl who said no to Warhol.”

It’s that quality, that quintessentially Philly attitude of “Leave me out of this mess” that has kept her in good stead all these years.

She credits simple advice imparted to her in her mother’s South Philly kitchen. “She sat me down just as everything started happening for me and said, ‘OK, then. If you’re going to do this, do it right.’” She emphasizes the last three words with a vehemence that underlines their importance to her.

“‘Don’t spit in the air,’ she told me. ‘It will only wind up landing on you.’”

Harlow is eager to have her story told now, compiling her memoirs and working with Oscar-nominated executive producer Christine Vachon — who produced Carol and Boys Don’t Cry — along with producers Liz Levine and Adrian Salpeter, on a planned movie based on her relationship with Kelly.

Rachel Harlow in this June 26, 1974 Daily News photo. Harlow is presented with a flower by an admirer. “Philadelphia is a big part of my story,” Rachel says now. “This picture sort of encapsulates that for me. Had I been the pariah, that picture wouldn’t have taken place. There would be no smiles. I was so well accepted. That was Philadelphia! Penns Woods, Quaker Philadelphia! They saw me, they decided to listen to me because I wasn’t an affront to them, and then when they heard the story they understood it.”

“I’m drawn to stories of people who rewrite the rules of survival. Rachel did that with style and defiance,” says director Aitch Alberto, who is also attached to the project. “She proved that identity can be a weapon and a crown at the same time.”

She’s motivated to speak by a large and well-funded conservative movement that has currently placed the rights of transgender people under greater threat than they’ve been for well over half a century. “It’s so important now — more important than ever — to tell my story,” she says.

“My God, look where we are now, where this … regime keeps attacking us! Fifty years ago, people didn’t care! We need to remind them.”

Every time she goes out, a crowd of admirers eventually surrounds her, kissing her ring and serenading her — both quite literally. Sitting by her side at Knock like a couple of royal scribes while she held court, we’ve met fashion, jewelry, and costume designers, cabaret artists, playwrights, figure skaters, gallery owners, retired surgeons, and elderly socialites, all of whom vie for a moment of her attention.

“Sixty years later, to be remembered when everything in this world is a seven-day wonder, and they forget you and throw you out like so much trash,” she says with emotion and gratitude.

Harlow chose to put the glare of the spotlight behind her over 30 years ago, but her city never forgot her, and whenever she steps out, Philadelphians still line up just to tell her.

“People have always been so kind to me,” she marvels, adding with a pleased smile, “But then, one always is, to a unicorn.”

Tom Fitzgerald and Lorenzo Marquez are the authors of “Legendary Children: The First Decade of RuPaul’s Drag Race & The Last Century of Queer Life.” They are currently working with Rachel “Harlow” Billebault on her memoirs.

December 6, 2025
How to have a Perfect Philly Day, according to Gritty

Ever since he emerged from the rubble of the Wells Fargo arena construction site in 2018, the Philadelphia Flyers mascot, Gritty, has been busy wreaking havoc across Philadelphia. One moment he’s dumping popcorn on Flyers fans in the Chaos Corner, the next he’s mooning the goalkeeper for the Boston Bruins. More often than not, he’s behaving recklessly with a T-shirt cannon.

Gritty shows his rear end to the Boston goal keeper during the Boston Bruins at Philadelphia Flyers NHL pre-season game at xfinity mobile ARENA in Philadelphia on Sept. 27, 2025.

Despite being famous for his game day antics, Gritty arguably gets into even more mischief off the ice. Who can forget his infamous Kim Kardashian impression?

Goodnight, internet. pic.twitter.com/gx2Pbxfcds

— Gritty (@GrittyNHL) September 25, 2018

Or that time he crashed Stephen Colbert’s Super Bowl party. Or how about when he tore through the streets of Philadelphia on a motorcycle to celebrate his third birthday. What did he do on his fourth birthday? Get divorced and start smoking Marlboro Reds?

Does Gritty like being so busy? If he could spend his day doing anything he wanted, would he really spend it throwing sheet cake at people and making celebrity appearances everywhere? To find out, we asked the bright orange, googly-eyed mascot to walk us through his perfect Philly day, and he responded in his perfect Gritty way.

4:55 a.m.

I roll out of bed just so I can tell people that I get up before them. I’m no hero, so I go back to bed. I sleep naked on a concrete floor, no covers, with a memory foam pillow.

8:30 a.m.

By this point in the morning, I’ve hit snooze a fistful of times. Time to start my lil day. First things first, coffee. I like my coffee like I like myself: gritty. I make it with no filter because I like the pulp. I drink it outside so I can bask in the sweet sounds of I-95 rush hour traffic.

10 a.m.

I’m a pretty busy Gritty. I make appearances at events all over the city. I’m also incredibly photogenic, as you know. I reserve my midmornings for events and photoshoots. My favorite thing to do is the 2026 Gritty calendar. It’s for charity, NBD. I’ll do anything for the perfect shot, like squeezing my nude body into one of those skinny rowboats at Boathouse Row and laboring my way down the Schuylkill.

Gritty likes to spend the afternoon bouncing around Philadelphia, posing for photos and popping up at special events.

Noon

I’ll do a little lunch at one of my favorite Philly spots. There’s a dumpster on Broad Street that serves the most delicious half-eaten burritos. I’m gatekeeping the location because I don’t want to see my favorite burrito spot overrun with tourists. But trust me, they’re decent.

2 p.m.

I usually eat until I feel sick, so I like to take a nap after lunch. I’ll sneak onto one of those ships at the Navy Yard and go down for about an hour. Hopefully my upset tum tum settles.

I built my own ‘Itty Bitty Gritty’ at the new Gritty store. He’s hideous. I love him.

3:30 p.m.

I’ve got people to see and places to be. But instead I do neither. The afternoon is my moment of zen. Maybe a quiet walk, maybe a light jog, maybe a full sprint after a group of strangers just to keep them on edge. There’s not a bad place in the city to chase strangers. Head on a swivel, Philly.

6 p.m.

Time for dinner. I’m a bit of a health nut, so I’m having a salad with a steak on the side. Maybe my steak is slathered in cheese. Maybe I eat it on a roll. OK, maybe it’s a cheesesteak. It could be from anywhere. I don’t judge a cheesesteak on taste. Only on girth. Maybe I don’t stop at just one. Maybe I didn’t want to talk about it because I thought you’d judge me. Maybe get off my case about it. Maybe cheesesteaks are the state fruit of Philadelphia, and I’m a supportive citizen.

Maybe you wouldn’t be so quick to judge if you relaxed a little bit and had a cheesesteak for yourself. Maybe I’m just built different and my body craves protein, and this is the only way to maintain my perfect fazeek. Maybe you’re just jealous that you’re counting calories while I’m counting empty wrappers. Anyway, yeah cheesesteak dinner.

Maybe Gritty eats a cheesesteak from John’s Roast Pork.

7 p.m.

It’s game time. I’m spending the next few hours at Xfinity Mobile Arena getting the people going! My favorite place, my home. I like to keep it out of pocket at Flyers games. Make some people laugh, throw some cake at people. No perfect day of mine would be complete without hurling a sheet cake through the air at a stranger’s face. Highly recommend if you’ve never tried. I live for chaos and chaos lives for me.

11 p.m.

Time to sleep. Naked. Airing out the follicles is a very important part of my fur care routine.

December 6, 2025
In Port Richmond, this new homeowner found a way to buy her house without sacrificing all her savings | How I Bought This House

The buyer: Sindhu Nair, 46, product manager

The house: a 1,254-square-foot rowhouse in Port Richmond with 3 bedrooms and 2½ bathrooms, built in 1925.

The price: listed for $315,000; purchased for $325,000

The agent: Rachel Shaw, Philly Home Girls

The ask: The first time Sindhu Nair tried to buy a house, the deal collapsed the day of closing. A lender told her last minute that he couldn’t approve the loan after all. The experience left such a sour taste that she stepped away from the market for years. But by 2025, she felt ready to try again, especially after seeing how much money she had sent her landlord on Cash App in the past two years. She was done giving her money to someone else, she said.

Sindhu Nair loved the light and the “good vibes” in the house’s living room.

Nair had been looking for a house for years and knew what she wanted. “I trusted my gut instincts,” she said. She needed at least two bedrooms and a bathroom on the ground floor. She also wanted a small backyard for her dog and access to easy street parking. She limited her search to the Port Richmond area. “My dog walker lives in this area,” Nair said, “so I’ve been in the neighborhood a lot, and it’s just so cute.” Her budget was $350,000.

The search: Nair began her search in July. The first place she toured had two private parking spaces but needed a gut renovation. “I didn’t want to take on that financial burden,” she said. She visited two other open houses that afternoon. Both appealed to her, and she hoped to make an offer on the less expensive one, but it already had two bids. She would have had to offer well over the $250,000 asking price to be competitive.

Meanwhile, the pricier home — the one she actually preferred — had no competing offers. After running the numbers and realizing the difference in cost was smaller than she expected because of the competing offers, she shifted course. “I decided just to go for the house that I wanted,” Nair said.

Sindhu Nair’s dog, Scotty, approves of her purchase.

The appeal: Nair says she knew she had found the one as soon as she stepped inside. “I think the universe was ready to provide me with this house,” Nair said. The light looked amazing, the space had a “good vibe,” and the backyard was the perfect size for her dog, Scotty. She loved that it was move-in ready. “Whoever rehabbed it did a beautiful job,” Nair said.

The deal: The seller’s agent told Nair at the open house that the seller was motivated and willing to offer a seller’s assist, which is when the seller agrees to cover a portion of the buyer’s closing costs. Nair and her agent asked for enough to cover nearly all of Nair’s closing costs.

In return, Nair offered $325,000 — $10,000 over the asking price — even though there weren’t any other offers. “We wanted to make sure that with the seller’s assist, she was still going to make a profit,” Nair said. She views the seller’s assist as a tool she used to keep more money in her bank account after she purchased the home. “It has nothing to do with financial stability,” Nair said. “It’s a financial tool that people should take advantage of.”

There are three bedrooms in Nair’s home. Scotty sleeps in the bedroom with Nair. Nair’s foster cat has her own room.

The seller accepted Nair’s offer and agreed to the amount for the seller’s assist.

The money: Nair began the year with about $60,000 in savings, but she used roughly half to pay off her private student loans. “They’d been the bane of my existence,” she said. “I imagined being 70 or 80 years old with debt collectors still calling me.” Paying off that balance left her with about $30,000, money she had saved gradually over the years. She didn’t want to use all of it for a down payment, though. “I wanted to have a cushion for anything that came up after I bought the house,” she said.

The back patio is the perfect size for Scotty, Nair says.

To keep more cash on hand, she worked with her lender to take out an FHA mortgage, which requires as little as 3.5% down and allows sellers to contribute to closing costs. With a seller’s assist, her out-of-pocket contribution dropped to around $10,000. Without it, she would have paid closer to $20,000. “It’s my first home,” Nair said, “and I’m proud of the strategies I used to get it.”

The move: Nair closed on the house on Aug. 25, a few days earlier than planned. The original closing date was Aug. 28, but she asked to move it up so she could leave her apartment before Sept. 1 and avoid paying another month of rent. She admits she was nervous while she waited for her mortgage to be approved. “I was sweating because of my first experience,” she said. “But my lender kept telling me, ‘Nope, you’re good. I would have told you if there was an issue.’”

The kitchen and living room in Sindhu Nair’s home.

Once her approval came through, she began lining up help. She hired someone to assist with packing and brought in movers for the actual move, but the two-step arrangement proved more frustrating than she expected. “I realized I didn’t save any money, and I just gave myself a headache,” she said. Next time, she plans to hire a company that handles everything — packing, loading, unloading, and unpacking — in one coordinated sweep.

Any reservations? Nair says she doesn’t have any regrets about the purchase. “I think I got lucky, and I feel very proud of myself for having this accomplishment,” she said. She’s thrilled to have paid off her student loans and bought a home in the same year, and she hopes her experience sends a message to others. “I want people to know, especially single women, that you can do this,” she said. “It’s not easy; it’s very hard, but it’s doable.”

Life after close: A Halloween housewarming party forced Nair to get the main parts of her house unpacked and organized, but there is still work to be done. She just started unpacking her basement and is getting ready to set up her office in the smallest bedroom. She’s not sure what she’ll do with the other bedroom. It currently houses an animal. “I have a cat that I’m fostering,” Nair said, “and that’s her bedroom.”

Did you recently buy a home? We want to hear about it. Email acovington@inquirer.com.

December 6, 2025
Holiday shopping, coastal trails, and craft beer in Lewes & the Delaware Beaches | Field Trip

They don’t go “down the Shore” on the other side of the Delaware Bay. First Staters go to the beach — or, more geographically correct, to the Delaware Beaches: the neighboring Atlantic towns of Rehoboth, Dewey, Bethany, and Fenwick Island, familiar to most Philadelphians even if they’ve never been.

The Delaware Beaches and Lewes, their historic bayside gateway, are charming and festive during the holidays. Come for the tax-free shopping and craft-beer icons, stay for the smart indie restaurants and pristine nature. It’s a quick trip across the bay on the ferry. Margate, Ocean City, and Wildwood will still be there when you get back.

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Ride: Cape May–Lewes Ferry

Getting to Coastal Delaware is half the fun when you take the Cape May-Lewes Ferry. It takes about the same amount of time to drive directly from Philly to Lewes as it does to drive to Cape May and board the boat for the 85-minute crossing, but only one option gives you cinematic views of the Delaware Bay — historically the most important waterway in the region. (No bay for Billy Penn to sail up, no founding of Philadelphia.) It’s also a key environment for marine life, from oysters and mussels to dolphins and seals. You might even catch a migrating humpback whale on the 17-mile crossing.

📍 1200 Lincoln Blvd., North Cape May, N.J. 08204

Stay: Dogfish Inn

One of the original craft-beer brands, Dogfish Head is maybe the most famous Delaware resident who wasn’t also POTUS. Sam Calagione founded the Milton brewery — more on that in a minute — in 1995, and it became such a tourist magnet that a hotel was a natural expansion.

The friendly, 16-room Dogfish Inn opened in 2014 and sits along the Lewes–Rehoboth Canal, walking distance to both the ferry and downtown. Rooms are simply furnished and stylish, with branded swag and pops of olive and teal. Outside, beer pilgrims, holiday shoppers, and their dogs (the inn is pet-friendly) gather around the Cowboy Cauldron, the nickname for the communal firepit.

📍 105 Savannah Rd., Lewes, Del. 19958

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Snack: The Station on Kings

Fig-tahini danish, pumpkin-cheesecake conchas, and sugared doughnuts plumped with chai-spiced cream gleam in the pastry case at the Station on Kings, a charming café with arboreal décor and a greenhouse dining room that feels sunny even when winter clouds cover the coast. Grab a table and settle in for a leisurely brunch of those excellent baked goods, a creamy French omelet, maybe the calendar-correct Mistletoe Matcha, Station’s matcha latte sweetened with white chocolate-peppermint syrup. After, browse the selection of candles, soaps, ornaments, and other local and artisan gifts.

📍 720 Kings Hwy., Lewes, Del. 19958

Shop: Tanger Outlets

Continue making your list and checking it twice at the Tanger Outlets in Rehoboth. Bargain hunters come year-round, but the holiday sales are especially enticing. The complex is divided into three clusters (Surfside, Seaside, Bayside) along Route 1, with more than 100 brands, including Nike, North Face, and Le Creuset.

📍 Route 1 Coastal Hwy., Rehoboth Beach, Del. 19971

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Walk: Cape Henlopen State Park

There’s a windswept solitude to the beach in December that, for anyone raised on towel-to-towel summer crowds, is narcotically surreal. Encompassing more than 5,000 acres of sandy shores, reedy wetlands, and maritime forest, Cape Henlopen State Park is the place to get centered in nature at the Delaware Beaches. Walking trails lace the preserve, winding through historical sites like Fort Miles, which played a critical coastal defense role in WWII, and around Gordon’s Pond. Head to the Point, near the hooked tip of Cape Henlopen, for views of the 140-year-old Delaware Breakwater Lighthouse.

📍 15099 Cape Henlopen Dr., Lewes, Del. 19958

Sip: Dogfish Head Brewery

Despite being bought by the Boston Beer Company in 2019, Dogfish remains a Delaware darling. The brand offers multiple touchpoints throughout the beaches, but it’s worth the 15-minute drive west of Lewes to the Milton brewery. Tours run three times daily, seven days a week, and include a pour of 60 Minute IPA. For an extra $8, enjoy a tasting flight in the on-site taproom.

📍 6 Cannery Village Center, Milton, Del. 19968

Eat: the Blue Hen

Located a block and a half from the beach, on the ground floor of the Avenue Inn & Spa, the Blue Hen gives cozy coastal tavern vibes with pewter-blue paint, carved woodwork, and a gallery wall of framed photographs. The cooking, from chef Julia Robinson, elevates the genre: gingered lobster toast with dashi aioli, mezze rigatoni with pistachio pesto and confit chicken, Iberico pork Milanese.

Robinson bought the Blue Hen with her wife, sommelier and GM Heather Sharp, in 2022 after moving from Philly in 2017. Walking the Rehoboth boardwalk after dinner, it’s easy to see the appeal.

📍 33 Wilmington Ave., Rehoboth Beach, Del. 19971

December 6, 2025
Dear Abby | Senior couple are on different paths in relationship

DEAR ABBY: I’m a man in my 70s. My girlfriend is eight years younger. We were first introduced 42 years ago by relatives who believed we would be a good match. I was an only child; she was from a broken home. We dated and liked each other, but there were communication problems. I was independent as a younger man and dated. She was devoted to her mother and cared for her until her passing. We reconnected and started dating seven years ago. We live an hour apart, and I would drive to spend a weekend with her every two weeks. We talk every day.

Things were good, and I asked if she would be interested in marriage someday. She said she would “consider it.” A few years later, I offered to buy a ring to show that she belonged to me, and she became upset. I backed off. A year ago, she suddenly said I shouldn’t come any longer. When I asked why, she told me I have said things in the past that upset her. She said I poke fun at things she likes to do and made comments that were intimate in nature. I asked why she hadn’t brought these issues to my attention sooner. She said she should have but just didn’t do it. I kid around a bit, even poke fun at myself, but I never intended to hurt anyone’s feelings. I apologized and suggested relationship therapy. She believed we could just work through it. She said she had to build up the trust again. We took a vacation, but nothing changed. Simple things like holding hands don’t seem to interest her anymore. I don’t have years to waste. Do I have the wrong girl here?

— FRUSTRATED IN OHIO

DEAR FRUSTRATED: Yup, you sure do. The lady isn’t physically attracted to you, and she can’t bring herself to communicate when there are problems that could be fixed. You can do better than this, and the time to start widening your dating circle is now.

** ** **

DEAR ABBY: I’ve been married to a wonderful man for five years. He has an almost-20-year-old daughter, “Amber,” whom he raised alone. Amber is spoiled and entitled because he overcompensated for the lack of a mother figure in her life. I get it. However, she continues to be disrespectful to me and has made him choose sides in disagreements. I’ve always tried to be neutral in situations. We all live together, but Amber and I just don’t get along. She doesn’t respect her father at all. When I have tried to make him realize it or support him when she’s being unruly, I am turned into the bad guy. I am not asking him to choose, but there is only one queen of the castle, and it isn’t me. What do I do?

— PRICKLY SITUATION IN GEORGIA

DEAR PRICKLY: Is Amber in college and living at home? Is she employed but not earning enough to support herself? Where is her mother? How long is she going to be living with you?

You and your “wonderful” husband could lessen some of the tension in your household if you start talking with a licensed marriage and family therapist. He should have stepped in the moment his daughter started acting out and insisted you be treated with respect (at the very least) as long as she is under his roof.

December 6, 2025
Dear Abby | Wife carries on communicating with former best friend

DEAR ABBY: My best friend of more than 10 years, “Ian,” ghosted me! We used to talk about everything — wives, children, jobs. We spent hours together and helped each other sort out our problems. He knew more about me than my wife. With no explanation, he stopped responding to texts and messages and is ignoring my calls. I have come to terms with this and deleted him from my social media and social circles. It’s been two years now.

The problem is my wife. Everyone else in my family has removed him from their social circles. However, my wife maintains contact with him. As far as I knew, they were only acquaintances. Yet now they comment on each other’s posts and play online games together. When Ian ghosted me, my wife asked if she should stop playing online with him. I replied, “You’re a big girl. I can’t tell you what to do. But I hope you’ll make the smart choice.” Well, she DIDN’T make the smart choice, or the loyal one.

Recently, one of Ian’s daughters got married, and that’s when I found out Ian and my wife were doing more than just gaming — they were still communicating online. My wife didn’t respond when I asked her why she was still in touch with him. I’m not sure what my next steps should be. I can’t believe my partner would choose to remain in contact with someone who hurt me so badly. I’m also concerned about what Ian might say to my wife, because we used to talk about marital issues we had with our wives. Help!

— UNEASY IN CANADA

DEAR UNEASY: When you expressed to your wife that she was a big girl and you didn’t care if she maintained a relationship with Ian, she regarded it as permission. Did you TELL her how deeply you were hurt when Ian ghosted you? If you haven’t, it’s time you did. I can’t predict how she will react, but if she cares about your feelings, she may stop playing games with your former friend. (I can’t help wondering if she knows why Ian cut ties with you so abruptly. Have you asked her?)

** ** **

DEAR ABBY: A year ago, I became seriously ill. I spent a long time in the hospital and 20 days in rehab learning how to walk again. My daughter told me I should stay in a nursing home and give up on walking. When I refused, she stormed out and hasn’t spoken to me since. I’m back on my feet now, back at work full-time, walking with a cane. I can’t quite bring myself to forgive her for that, because I needed her so badly. How do I resolve this?

— DISAPPOINTED MOM IN TENNESSEE

DEAR MOM: Why do I have the feeling that there are facts you may have omitted from your letter? Surely, this didn’t happen out of the blue. Your daughter’s reaction to the fact that you want to live independently is bizarre, unless she was afraid she might have to take care of you. It appears you raised a daughter who is lacking in character and compassion. Resolve this by walking your own path (literally) and deriving support from people who are capable of caring about you.

December 5, 2025
White is the 2026 Pantone Color of the Year. They say the choice isn’t political.

In a colorless move that, Pantone says, speaks to our collective longing for calmness, a clean slate, serenity, and focus, the New Jersey-based global color authority named Cloud Dancer — a billowy, balanced white — as its 2026 color of the year.

The blank hue’s uncluttered vibe, Pantone says, plucks us out of the day-to-day crazy of our newsfeeds, AI-generated madness, and hustle culture.

White, says Pantone Color Institute’s vice president Laurie Pressman, offers relief and respite. White noise silences the cacophony of worry rattling around in our overstimulated brains. The color gives us permission to think, refocus, and chart a new future.

The pause between the doing, white is the be-ing.

“White speaks to the value of measured consideration and quiet reflection,” Pressman said. “It represents a future free of toxicity and excess … contentment and peace, unity, and cohesiveness. It’s ethereal. White embraces the clouds.”

Sweet dollops of whipped cream are white, meringue is white. Fluffy mashed potatoes are white, too.

A fresh pair of Air Force 1s, patent leather go-go boots, a clean tee, a crisp button-up. A voluminous bridal gown. We ski in winter white.

Mikado crop top with organza ball-gown skirt, limited edition ($1,150) at David’s Bridal, with pearl-drop earrings ($1,300) at Rosnov Jewelers. (Michael Bryant/Staff Photographer)

White is fly.

“In fashion and interior design, white is in our comfort zone,” said Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. “It’s natural and organic. It’s about sustainability.”

White is ethereal. She’s dreamy. She represents new beginnings. I’m overwhelmed, too. I would love to drop my precepts and jump into a world of my own making. Architectural white shirts and black pants are my grown woman fashion go-to.

I get it.

But y’all, white is the color of the year in 2026.

As a Black woman living in Trump’s America, I can’t help but wonder if Pantone’s choice of Cloud Dancer was much more of a nefarious harbinger than they perhaps realized.

No, I don’t think Pantone is low key promoting whiteness or advocating for a white savior.

Cloud Dancer, the 2026 Color of the Year, is billowy like this curtain blowing in the wind.

Rather, to me, Cloud Dancer is a subliminal acknowledgment of the power structure emerging in America, especially her politics. The Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in universities and the federal government; its attempts to whitewash American history; its deportation of undocumented (and documented) brown immigrants; its adoption of white supremacist values: It all points to an America that values white lives more than others.

Fashion and style always gives us clues to the future. So, I asked Pantone if they were tapping into something that perhaps they weren’t even aware of?

“Absolutely not,” Pressman said, her tone pleading with me to stop with the correlation. “Pantone is not political.”

Pantone is not political, true. But its trend forecasters keep their manicured fingers on the pulse. And in this moment I’m unable to ignore Ku Klux Klan robes are white, too.

COY is always right

Pantone’s Color of the Year is rooted in fashion. Its early picks – oceanic Cerulean in 2000; orange Tiger Lilly in 2004; and golden Mimosa in 2009 – influenced clothing, accessories, and makeup. As we moved deeper into the millennium, COY was the trendy choice for Kitchen Aids, accent walls, and Post-it notes.

In the last decade, however, color of the year has come to define our collective moods more than just our fashion aspirations.

It’s the aura hovering over the world, indicative not just of the life we have, but the one we want. The colors have become a peek into the energy of the feelings driving tomorrow’s zeitgeist.

That became crystal clear in 2016, the first year Pantone chose two colors — a pink Rose Quartz and a baby blue Serenity. The dual hues were a nod to the emerging blurring of gender lines.

In 2021, Pantone chose two colors again: Ultimate Gray and Illuminating Yellow.

A year into the pandemic, we were emerging from a 2020 into a hopeful 2021, Pressman explained.

The 2023 color, Viva Magenta, spoke to the vibrant post-pandemic life we craved.

The Pantone Color of the Year is Cloud Dancer. The soft white represents a clean palette, a fresh start, shift and change.

And its 2025 pick was Mocha Mousse, the color of espresso martinis, expensive wood, and me. It made such good sense in a year Black girl magic was at its peak.

Things took a quick turn after. According to a New York Times study, 319,000 Black women have left both public and private sector jobs in 2025, the result of the Trump administration’s cost-cutting and DEI Initiatives.

A clean slate

A key reason why Pantone chose white is because, Pressman said, people are craving blank slates.

“People have gotten to a point where they see what’s happening isn’t working for them anymore,” Pressman said. “They want something different, new, authentic.”

Cloud Dancer hit that nail on the head.

The Trump administration is dismantling the Department of Education, killing funding for the arts, scrubbing civil rights departments in federal agencies, and decimating medical research, replacing vaccine recommendations with unsubstantiated claims about Tylenol.

Debris is seen at a largely demolished part of the East Wing of the White House, Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025, in Washington, before construction of a new ballroom. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

The violent crimes of Jan. 6 protesters have been pardoned. The president has ripped out the East Wing of the White House.

All clean slates and new beginnings. But for who?

Cloud Dancer, Eiseman said, is a throwback to classic fashion, citing Coco Chanel and Audrey Hepburn. Sure, fashion of the “Golden Era” was glamorous. These women were undeniably well-dressed, but it was also a time when white gloves and girdles were the norm, and equally glamorous Black women like 1940 Academy Award winner Hattie McDaniel was forced to sit in a segregated section during the Oscar ceremony because her white colleagues didn’t want to sit next to her.

When the conversation turned to the yin (black) and yang (white) of fashion, I wondered aloud if, maybe this could have been a year when Pantone chose two colors: black and white. Perhaps this could signify harmony.

Crickets.

Pantone’s Color of the Year image of the Cloud Dancer.

Later, I realized Pantone didn’t pick the cooperative vibe up, because it just wasn’t there.

I’m not ready to wave the white flag yet. In the midst of all this, white remains a shade of hope, purity, and freedom. It’s the color of the Suffragist movement. Pantone’s is simply yet another canary in the coal mine which means I have a lot of work to do.

I can’t afford to have my head in the clouds.

December 4, 2025
Dear Abby | Argumentative, abusive brother alienates family

DEAR ABBY: I have a brother who is very opinionated and in my face any time I don’t agree with him. It doesn’t matter what the subject is; he thinks he’s the only one who knows anything about it. He is not educated, but he thinks he’s smarter than everyone else, even educated people.

He won’t let me get a word in while he’s yelling and screaming in my face. He resorts to name-calling, telling me I’m wrong and calling me stupid. Later, he sends emails and texts trying to prove to me why I am wrong. I think he is abusive and has a mental disorder. He has accomplished nothing in his life.

My husband and I have careers. If I try to remain quiet around my brother, he starts aggravating me to get a reaction. He has alienated my family. No one wants to be around him. What’s the best way to shut him down to make whatever time we have to spend together more civil?

— SMART SIS IN MISSISSIPPI

DEAR SIS: No magic formula will shut down your abusive, immature and possibly mentally ill brother. Accept the fact that you can’t change him, and save your sanity by avoiding him as often as possible.

** ** **

DEAR ABBY: I recently asked a friend to cat-sit while I was out of town for a few days. We agreed she would stop by daily to feed my kitty, refresh her water and spend a little time with her. When I returned, I noticed several signs that she hadn’t been coming by every day — food bowls untouched, litter box fuller than it should’ve been, and a very lonely (and vocal) cat.

I haven’t confronted my friend yet, but I’m hurt and disappointed. I trusted her with my pet’s care. I would have made other arrangements had I known she couldn’t commit. I don’t want to jump to conclusions, but I also feel I can’t just brush this off. How do I approach this conversation without blowing it out of proportion or damaging the friendship, while still addressing that this wasn’t OK

— CAT LADY IN MICHIGAN

DEAR CAT LADY: One can only wonder what else this friend is irresponsible about. However, I do not endorse “taking her to the woodshed.” In the future, when you plan to travel, make other arrangements for the care of your cat. This person was less than purr-fect.

** ** **

DEAR ABBY: I have always wanted to do some exotic travel. I’m retired now, but my wife has medical issues. She can still drive, shop, etc., but international travel would be too much for her.

I don’t mind traveling alone, and I have saved up enough with such trips in mind. I don’t want to be selfish, but I want to see parts of the world I have yet to see. What’s fair?

— FUTURE TRAVELER IN CALIFORNIA

DEAR TRAVELER: Fortunately, your wife is still somewhat independent and could manage in your absence. What is “fair” would be for you to discuss this with her and negotiate an agreement that’s acceptable to both of you. If your wife would like to travel a bit, perhaps you could split your savings between short domestic excursions with her and solo trips abroad.

December 4, 2025