When Coach opened a store at the Cherry Hill Mall in November, mall executives were ecstatic — even though it’s been 85 years since the high-end retailer was founded.
Coach is as hot as ever. And its new shop in Cherry Hill is just another sign of the South Jersey mall’s success, according to leaders with Pennsylvania Real Estate Investment Trust (PREIT), which owns the complex.
“Cherry Hill is clearly a dominant fashion property,” Paula Charles, PREIT’S first vice president of leasing, said in a recent interview.
In the competitive Philadelphia market, “the better retailers have gravitated toward the better assets,” including Cherry Hill, added Joe Aristone, PREIT’s chief revenue officer.
They noted that top-tier retailers increasingly include legacy brands — long-established companies like Coach, Zara, and Levi’s, that are making a nostalgic, social media-fueled comeback with younger consumers.
Employee Alex Costa (right) assists Alessandra Bruno as she shops for purses with husband, Luke Baur, and their 20-month-old daughter, Rosalina, at the Coach store at the Cherry Hill Mall.
In the Philadelphia area, these retailers have maintained a presence along shopping corridors in Center City and at higher-performing malls like Cherry Hill and King of Prussia, which is owned by Simon Property Group.
Prior to the Cherry Hill opening, Coach operated shops in King of Prussia and Marlton, as well as off-price locations at the Philadelphia Premium Outlets near Pottstown, the Gloucester Premium Outlets in Blackwood, and the Tanger Outlets in Atlantic City. The brand also has an outpost at the Philadelphia International Airport.
Coach spokespeople did not return requests for comment about their investment in the region.
PREIT executives declined to comment on sales so far at their new Coach store, but said brand and mall executives are pleased with how the store is doing — and what that means going forward.
“Coach has had a strategy to make sure that they capture Gen Z,” a demographic that PREIT executives also want to attract and retain as they age, Charles said.
Why Gen Z and millennials love Coach
Joe Williams, of Magnolia, N.J., buys a handbag for his daughter, Samantha Williams, at the Coach store at the Cherry Hill Mall.
About two years ago, Breana Stringer, now 26, noticed that many of her friends were going out with Coach bags. And when she’d open TikTok, she said, the platform’s algorithm showed her videos of other users’ Coach collections.
Up until that point, the Fishtown resident had been an accessory minimalist: “I was very much an ‘if it doesn’t fit in my pocket, I’m not bringing it’” type of person.
But Stringer said she was influenced by her friends and TikTok to start buying Coach bags, mostly secondhand (though she has received new Coach bags as gifts). She has come to enjoy styling them with her outfits.
To Stringer, Coach’s appeal to Gen Z consumers is simple, she said: “They’re affordable in terms of a luxury name brand, and they’re vintage styles.”
New Coach bags start at $95 for a short shoulder bag, while larger purses can cost $500 or more. At outlet stores and secondhand shops, prices are lower.
In South Philly, Stephanie Gonzalez, 33, has restored and resold dozens of vintage Coach bags, mostly to Gen Z and millennial women.
She said these women see the Coach brand as “timeless.”
For Gen Z, “what is happening is they are really into Y2K, late-’90s, early-’90s nostalgia,” Gonzalez said. “TikTok has been a big hub for people” to share their love of Coach and brands that were popular in those years.
As for other legacy brands, Stringer said some of her Gen Z friends have also started wearing Cartier rings, which have been around since the mid-1800s and can cost more than $1,000. It’s a trend Stringer has yet to get behind, she said, because she has a tendency to lose small accessories: “I’m less likely to lose a bag.”
How legacy brands are boosting Philly-area malls
Products are displayed at the Coach store at the Cherry Hill Mall.
Cherry Hill Mall isn’t the only local shopping center to have welcomed new legacy retailers recently.
In the past six months, Abercrombie & Fitch, Columbia Sportswear, Lacoste, and New Balance have opened new stores at the King of Prussia Mall, and an Adidas outpost is also set to open there soon.
At the Philadelphia Premium Outlets, Hugo Boss, Marc Jacobs, and New Balance have opened stores in the past year, while the Gloucester Premium Outlets in Blackwood have added New Balance and Columbia locations. Like the King of Prussia Mall, both outlet malls are owned by Simon Property Group.
Typically, these re-energized brands are attracted to places where other similar companies have already set up shop, say the PREIT executives who help shape the tenant mix at the Cherry Hill Mall.
And they said this cyclical effect further cements the region’s dominant retail centers as shopping destinations.
“There is so much media out there as it relates to closed malls,” said Aristone, the chief revenue officer. Many of the surviving malls, however, are thriving, he said, thanks in part to these legacy brands.
Americans could start paying more at the gas pump, following the U.S.-Israel strikes on Iran.
West Texas Intermediate crude, an oil produced in the United States, surged 6.2% on Monday to $71.19 per barrel. As of Tuesday, it has spiked another 8%, hovering at around $77. It marks the oil’s highest point in over a year. But that’s just the beginning.
Experts say those surges reflect similar spikes in natural gas and at the gas station.
Here’s what we know.
Why are gas prices going up?
Known as the “crude oil effect,” when oil prices go up, so does the price of the fuel it makes. Crude oil must be processed at refineries to be turned into gasoline.
The conflict in the Middle East, which President Donald Trump said he anticipates could take longer than a few weeks, means the global supply of oil is disrupted, and, in turn, the price of a barrel of oil goes up. This causes the price of fuel to also rise.
“Whatever the time is, it’s OK,” Trump said. “Right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that. We’ll do it.”
Oil prices were already on the rise, up 17% this year. Experts say the increase is a direct effect of Trump’s rhetoric against Iran, along with his administration’s recent sanctions against the country.
And, as noted by John Quigley, a senior fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, it’s not just oil and gasoline; natural gas is also seeing a price increase.
And U.S. consumers will be hit hard, he says.
“It’s disrupting global oil and gas markets,” he said. “The war is quickly widening into a regional conflict, with the production capacity of multiple oil- and gas-producing nations being attacked by Iran in retaliatory strikes. This has already disrupted global oil and natural gas shipments.”
How much have gas prices increased since the strike on Iran?
As oil prices surged Monday, the impacts already started to trickle down to gas stations. This week, the national average of gas per gallon surpassed $3 for the first time since November.
Some states, including Illinois, Michigan, and Texas have already reported increases of about 5 cents per gallon.
As of Tuesday morning, the national average hit $3.11, marking the largest single-day increase since 2022, according to GasBuddy, a gas price tracking service.
Quigley says those increases could be just the beginning.
“Prices for natural gas in European and Asian markets have already spiked 50%. U.S. natural gas exporters will rush to take advantage of that, diverting domestic supplies to exports and pushing up domestic natural gas prices,” he said. “That will raise costs for home heating, and worsen already surging electricity costs, because over 40% of electricity generation in PJM, the nation’s largest grid, is fueled by natural gas.”
Do gas prices always rise during war?
Gas prices historically surge when conflicts happen because of a mix of supply disruptions, geopolitical uncertainty, and oil infrastructure attacks.
As detailed by NPR, major price surges occurred during the Gulf War, the 2003 Iraq invasion, and the 2022 Russia-Ukraine war.
How high could gas prices get?
GasBuddy petroleum analyst Patrick De Haan told multiple news outlets he believes some gas stations could charge as much as 30 cents more per gallon by the end of the week.
He estimated prices would be around $3.10 or $3.20 per gallon by the end of the week and anticipated they would hit $3.30 to $3.35 “in time.”
Based on the numbers at this moment (3/3/26, 945am ET), the average price of gasoline would likely climb to about $3.30-$3.35/gal in time. Any further changes in markets will change this, but if everything held still, that's where we'd likely be. Diesel closer to $4.25-$4.45.
What are the average gas prices in the Philadelphia region? How does that compare to the national average?
As of Tuesday morning:
The national average gas price: $3.11
The Pennsylvania average gas price: $3.21
The Philadelphia average gas price: $3.12
Which areas in the Philly region have the lowest gas prices?
The average price of gas in Philly is $3.12 per gallon as of Tuesday morning. Still, there are some spots with lower prices, according to GasBuddy.
Among the lowest appears to be an Eastcoast station in Fairmount (801 N. Broad St.) with gas going for $2.79 as of Monday evening. A Marathon in Southwest Philly (2450 Island Ave.) listed gas at $2.74 within the last 24 hours.
Among the highest appears to be a Gulf station in Kingsessing (5200 Woodland Ave.), priced at $3.29 as of Monday evening.
Who sets gas prices?
No one person sets gas prices. In reality, the price you see at pumps is the result of a combination of oil prices, supply and demand, oil refining costs, distribution, and competition.
A federal jury in Philadelphia awarded $1.67 million to the sons of a diabetic man who died in a city jail in 2023, finding the death was part of a pattern in which the Philadelphia Department of Prisons failed to provide access to healthcare for its population.
Louis Jung Jr. was found dead on Nov. 6, 2023, in his cell at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility. The 50-year-old man died of a condition called diabetic ketoacidosis, in which blood becomes acidic due to high sugar levels.
His last known insulin dose was two days prior, according to medical records.
In a four-day trial presided over by U.S. District Judge Timothy J. Savage, attorneys for Jung’s sons argued the death was preventable and the result of jail staff ignoring their father’s medical needs.
“When the government keeps custody, the government has a duty for care,” Nia Holston, an attorney from the Abolitionist Law Center representing Jong’s sons, told the jury.
The jury on Monday found that Lt. Wanda Bloodsaw and the city violated Jung’s constitutional right to medical care during his incarceration. The seven jurors cleared a correctional officer, Gena Frasier.
The jurors further found the failure was part of a pattern under former Prisons Commissioner Blanche Carney’s leadership, which lasted from 2016 to 2024.
It is notable that a jury held the “highest echelons” of the city jails accountable, said Bret Grote, the legal director of the Abolitionist Law Center, who also represented Jung’s sons.
“This trial represented justice for the Jung family,” Grote said. “But it’s also a capstone from a very grim era in the Philadelphia Department of Prisons.”
YesCare, the company contracted to provide medical services in the jail, and three of its medical staffers settled for undisclosed amounts before trial. An additional nurse, working for a separate contractor, settled for $200,000.
The jury awarded Jung’s sons $1.5 million in compensatory damages. It also awarded $170,00 in punitive damages against Bloodsaw.
“We are reviewing the verdict and do not have a comment at this time,” Ava Schwemler, a spokesperson for the city’s law department, said in a statement.
Not ‘a single drop’ of insulin
Jung was arrested in December 2021 on robbery charges, and his diabetes was poorly managed while incarcerated, the lawsuit says. He was hospitalized for high blood sugar levels four days after he arrived at the correctional facility, and twice more during his first six months there.
In spring 2023, a judge sent him to Norristown State Hospital for psychiatric evaluation of his ability to stand trial.
He returned to Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on Oct. 28. During his intake, Jung’s blood sugar level was over four times higher than the upper limit of the normal range, according to the complaint.
Louis Jung Jr., who died in November 2023 in a Philadelphia jail.
On Nov. 5, Jung asked Frasier to see a nurse. The correctional officer brought a licensed practical nurse to Jung’s cell, where he lay down on the floor at the entrance, according to testimony and video surveillance.
Frasier and the nurse briefly stood over Jung and walked away.
A few minutes later Bloodsaw, who supervised the housing unit that day, stood over Jung as two incarcerated men put him back in his cell. That was the last known interaction between Jung and jail staff until his death roughly 20 hours later.
In that time period, the father of three did not receive “a single drop of lifesaving insulin,” Holston told the jury.
Frasier and Bloodsaw ignored signs of a medical emergency, and failed to follow a jail policy that requires a follow-up with a medical providers after an incarcerated person refuses to take medications, the attorneys said.
An internal investigation found that Bloodsaw did not comply with jail policies, and officials suspended her for 15 days. The suspension has not taken place yet, which attorneys for Jung’s sons said demonstrates a culture that does not emphasize accountability.
The attorneys showed to the jury the results of more than a dozen internal death investigations between 2018 and 2023 that concluded staff did not provide appropriate aid or check their units as required.
Carney testified that the incidents were not part of a systemic failure. The majority of correctional officers follow their duty with fidelity, the former commissioner said, and should not be painted with a “broad brush” because of the failures of a few.
Attorneys for the city told the jury that jail staff followed the medical assessment of YesCare staff, and that Jung was noncompliant.
“I don’t know why he was refusing his insulin,” city attorney Michael Pestrak said. “But he was.”
The city pointed to a 2023 report commissioned by Carney to review medical care in the jail, including diabetes care, and other policy changes as evidence that city officials were paying attention to medical needs and attempting to improve care.
Jung’s ex-wife, Evelyn Tyson, provided emotional testimony about the impact of his death. He remained her “best friend” after the divorce, she said, and was committed to their three children, including their eldest, who requires full-time care due to cerebral palsy.
“I don’t live anymore,” Tyson said.” I’m just existing.”
A group of special grants from the William Penn Foundation will help ensure continued access to the Please Touch Museum, Franklin Institute, and other Philadelphia nonprofit attractions for patrons of modest means and/or with disabilities.
William Penn has granted a total of $7.6 million to seven groups to underwrite the existing program providing access to $2 tickets.
Ticket prices are an obstacle for many, and arts and culture groups must weigh their desire to be open to all audiences, regardless of capacity to pay, against the reality of balancing their own budgets.
“Our general admission price is around $24 and we believe that’s competitively priced with other peer organizations,” said Please Touch Museum president and CEO Melissa Weiler Gerber. “But we want to make sure that we are committed to having folks come in the door and that not be a barrier.”
The William Penn money — $872,350 per year for each of the next three years — will support that ambition by underwriting the $2 tickets to the children’s museum in Fairmount Park.
The groups receiving the grants, in addition to the Please Touch and the Franklin Institute, are the Academy of Natural Sciences, Morris Arboretum and Gardens, the Philadelphia Zoo, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, where the grant will support the museum’s restoration of pay-what-you-wish Friday evenings.
The William Penn money is being allotted on top of the regular funding the foundation gives to area arts and culture groups, which is expected to reach $32 million this year.
Art-Reach will also receive a grant. The group administers the program, which began in 2014 and provides $2 admission to area museums, gardens, theaters, musical groups, and other cultural offerings to those with low incomes and/or disabilities.
The six attractions were chosen because they are the most visited participants in the program, which is called Harvey and Virginia Kimmel Family Fund ACCESS Program.
But it’s worth noting that none of the six is a performing arts organization, and the program has about a hundred other groups of various kinds that could also use the support.
“I think that there is a lot of need for the rest of the partners in the program,” said Art-Reach executive director John Orr, adding that he hoped the William Penn action would be “catalytic” in inspiring other donors to support low-cost access to arts and culture groups.
Affordability was cited as a factor in deciding which cultural sites to visit by 91% of participants in a recent survey of ACCESS cardholders, Orr said.
At the same time, cultural groups are being buffeted by multiple challenges, said William Penn Foundation chief philanthropy officer Elliot Weinbaum.
“There have been lots of shifts and uncertainty around myriad funding sources. You think about federal sources — NEA, NEH, IMLS, National Science Foundation — all of them have seen big cuts and big uncertainty,” he said. “These institutions received some money from some combination of those entities. There have been shifts in corporate giving in the past year or so.”
Hence the foundation’s decision to step in with new funding for the work of these organizations.
Said Weinbaum: “We want to strengthen the institutions, support them, and make it clear that for William Penn Foundation it’s important that a population that’s really representative of Philadelphia continues to have access to these great places.”
For more information about how the ACCESS program works, visit art-reach.org.
There will be a lot of change on TV for Major League Baseball this season, but Jimmy Rollins isn’t going anywhere.
The former Phillies star and 2007 National League MVP signed a deal to remain at TNT as part of the network’s studio show. Terms of his new contract weren’t announced, but it’s a “multi-year extension” that will keep him on TV the next few years, the network said.
It will be Rollins’ 11th season with TNT, though his broadcasting career began with Fox during the 2013 World Series, while he was still with the Phillies. He also tried his hand at calling a few games on NBC Sports Philadelphia alongside Tom McCarthy and John Kruk but has grown to love the back-and-forth of the studio.
Rounding out the cast is host Lauren Shehadi and three-time All-Star Curtis Granderson.
TNT also re-signed game analyst Jeff Francoeur, who spent most of his career with the Atlanta Braves but played for the Phillies in 2015.
During the regular season, TNT airs nonexclusive national games on Tuesday nights, which means when the Phillies are on the network, they’re also airing locally on NBC Sports Philadelphia. This season, TNT also will broadcast the American League divisional and championship series.
TBS will air two Phillies games during the first half of the season — April 14 against the Chicago Cubs, and June 2 against the San Diego Padres. Both will be blacked out in the Philly TV market.
NBC bringing Bob Costas back for MLB games, too
Bob Costas will return to NBC for its coverage of MLB this season.
Costas told The Inquirer the plan is for him to host about two-thirds of the pregame shows leading up to NBC’s coverage of Sunday Night Baseball, beginning March 26 when the Arizona Diamondbacks take on the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“NBC sees me as the bridge between the last time they had baseball. … To just kind of attach the old to the new,” Costas said, not counting the one season they streamed Sunday morning games on Peacock, which also is returning this season.
While Costas is known for opening monologues and a thoughtful analysis of sports that goes beyond the field, he won’t have much time most nights.
“The average Sunday night is going to be a tight pregame, only maybe 12 minutes of content,” Costas said. “But we wanted it to be worthwhile content.”
Costas last called an MLB game in 2024, when he did play-by-play for the American League Divisional Series between the New York Yankees and Kansas City Royals on TNT. After the series, he announced he was retiring as an announcer, ending a four-decade career calling MLB games.
During the series, Costas received a lot of criticism on social media, not unusual for baseball announcers during national broadcasts. Looking back, he called his performance “OK” but not “as good as the decades prior.”
“I was able to do baseball play-by-play pretty darn well for a very long time,” Costas said. “I just couldn’t consistently reach my own standard.”
“But I can do everything else as well,” Costas added. “The interviews, the essays, the commentaries, the hosting. I can do that as well as I ever did. I think.”
The Phillies’ first appearance on Sunday Night Baseball will be April 19, but that game will be a Peacock exclusive because NBC will be airing the NBA playoffs on Sunday nights through the end of May.
The Phillies’ first game on NBC (other than opening day locally on NBC10) will be June 21 against the New York Mets.
Netflix, ESPN round out MLB TV changes
While ESPN will no longer broadcast Sunday Night Baseball or the wild-card games (which also were nabbed by NBC), it still will air 30 MLB games during the regular season, mostly during the week.
ESPN’s schedule includes the second-half opener between the Phillies and Mets on June 16 and the MLB Little League Classic on Aug. 23 in Williamsport, Pa.
Netflix will stream MLB’s season opener between the Yankees and San Francisco Giants on March 25. It also will stream this year’s Home Run Derby on July 13 at Citizens Bank Park, and the annual Field of Dreams game between the Phillies and Minnesota Twins on Aug. 13 in Dyersville, Iowa.
New York Times-verified images from a scene in southern Iran are horrific. A severed arm of a child lying in the rubble. Backpacks covered in ashes. The dead in body bags. Video of rescue workers digging through the remains of what had been a modest, two-story school near a military installation in southern Iran.
Please stop for a moment and think about the babies who died over the weekend. I call them that because that’s really what they were: elementary-age schoolchildren learning their lessons on what had started as a typical school day during their holy month of Ramadan, before turning into a nightmare.
Regardless of what you think about the joint U.S.-Israeli strikes against Iran, these girls were innocents. Students ages 7-12, they didn’t deserve this. Even growing up under the horribly repressive thumb of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, they had hopes and dreams for their lives that sadly now will never be realized. Their families must be out of their minds with grief.
It’s tempting to turn away from such a devastating tragedy, but America needs to bear witness to what has happened. President Donald Trump says the U.S. joined with Israel to bring about regime change and stop the production of nuclear weapons. Iranian security forces have reportedly killed thousands of their own people.
It’s still unclear exactly how many schoolgirls were killed, and which nation is responsible for the strike. The Times is reporting that at least 175 people altogether perished during the attack on the school, located in the city of Minab in southern Iran.
Rescue workers and residents search through the rubble in the aftermath of an Israeli-U.S. strike on a girls’ elementary school in Minab, Iran, Feb. 28.
According to the Times, the school is near a naval base where the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps is stationed. Reportedly, it was also struck that day. Various news sources reported that a spokesperson for U.S. Central Command said military officials are “aware of reports concerning civilian harm resulting from ongoing military operations” and are “looking into them.”
Meanwhile, the reports have sparked worldwide outrage. Nobel Peace Prize laureate and education activist Malala Yousafzai wrote on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter, “I stand firmly against violence and the targeting of schools and civilians.” She was a child herself when she was shot while returning home from school in Pakistan in 2012.
Imagine the blanket news coverage that would have taken place if something even remotely like this had taken place at a school on American soil. It would have made the front page of every newspaper. But because it happened in a Muslim country thousands of miles away, it’s easier to act as if it never happened.
We can’t allow this kind of violence to be normalized.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris spoke for many of us over the weekend when she said, “Trump has dragged us into a war that we do not want.” The former Democratic presidential candidate added, “I unequivocally oppose this war of choice, and everyone should.”
Polls show most agree with Harris. Only one in four Americans approves of this war in the Middle East. I get it. We don’t want another drawn-out situation. We didn’t agree to this, and only Congress has the authority to authorize war.
We don’t even know what Trump’s endgame is, but he has let us know that the U.S. can expect more military casualties. More war means more airstrikes and more civilian fatalities — possibly even devastation like what happened at the girls’ school — where, as Yousafzai said on X, “every child deserves to live and learn in peace.”
Given the administration’s reluctance to share more about the planned scope and scale of our military engagement, there is little we can say with certainty. Except that Trump’s reckless war proves his “Board of Peace” is a farce.
The Plaza Grande apartment complex, part of a Cherry Hill housing development that took almost two decades to complete, is now on the market.
The apartments in the 55+ housing complex near the former Garden State Park Racetrack were listed for sale last month, as first reported by the Philadelphia Business Journal. The 507 rental units across 16 buildings are located just south of the Cherry Hill Mall between Routes 70 and 38 and were completed last year.
The residential Plaza Grande at Garden State Park was the last piece of a $1 billion redevelopment of the former Garden State Park horse racing track and surrounding area. The mixed-use complex spans hundreds of acres and is known for Wegmans, Trader Joe’s, restaurants, and other stores.
Home construction at the 34-acre Plaza Grande portion began in 2007, and 101 condos were built. But several builders failed to finish the project in the face of hurdles that included the Great Recession and lawsuits.
A few years ago, New York-based investor and developer William “Billy” Procida stepped in. He completed construction on the remaining283 of the 507 apartments last summer, and the units are now 80% leased.
“We’re not in the business of holding property,” he said. “But this one, I put so much blood, sweat, and tears in it, it’s a hard one to let go.”
Developer William “Billy” Procida poses in the lobby of the clubhouse at Plaza Grande at Garden State Park in Cherry Hill on Aug. 6, 2025.
He said he’d like to find a buyer “who’s going to treat it really nice.”
Offers are due in a month, said Samantha Kupersmith, senior director at JLL Capital Markets, which is handling the sale. The property listing does not include an asking price, as is generally the case for properties JLL handles, she said.
The property is in “such a good location with a lot of scale,” which makes this “a unique deal,” Kupersmith said.
One- and two-bedroom apartments at the Plaza Grande are currently available starting at $2,200 and $2,800 per month, respectively. Five three-bedroom apartments started at $5,500 but allare leased.
The property has an 18,500-square-foot clubhouse and offers programming such as cooking and fitness classes, concerts, and wellness events. Condo owners and renters have access to amenities that include a movie theater, a gym, tennis and pickleball courts, indoor and outdoor pools, and indoor golf.
Procida’s company announced last month that it had chosen Millstone Property Management to oversee operations at the apartment complex starting March 21. Millstone Property Management specializes in managing multifamily properties across Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Florida.
The newest rental apartments at Plaza Grande at Garden State Park in Cherry Hill are reflected in the clubhouse pool on Aug. 5, 2025.
NEW YORK — If someone starts making money somewhere, the Big Apple often isn’t far behind trying to claim a piece.
So when Philadelphia’s hosting of Unrivaled’s women’s basketball league banked $2 million in revenue, turning profits for the league and Comcast, it wasn’t surprising that this city wanted in.
Nor was it surprising that Unrivaled wanted it too. The three-on-three circuit and Brooklyn’s Barclays Center had already talked about next season, but a deal quickly came together to move this season’s playoff semifinals here. It was a natural fit for a venue renowned for drawing some of the WNBA’s biggest and loudest crowds to New York Liberty games.
“When this opportunity came up, they jumped right on it,” Paige Bueckers of Breeze BC and the Dallas Wings said. “I played here a couple times before, and the atmosphere in the arena is just electric. [Philadelphia] was everything that we could have dreamed that it would be, and so it’s obviously an opportunity that we want to take advantage of again.”
Paige Bueckers (right) working against Arike Ogunbowale in the Breeze vs. Mist semifinal.
How would this scene compare to Xfinity Mobile Arena’s record crowd of 21,490, as the city unleashed itself from a 28-year-wait to see professional women’s basketball in person?
Natasha Cloud played diplomat, being both a Broomall native and Liberty fan favorite.
“This is just a testament to the demand [for] women’s basketball right now,” the Phantom BC guard said. “This [night] is going to sell out tonight again, just like Philly did. And this is why we’re going to continue to stand on our worth and our value because when you give the product, the demand is there.”
One could guess that New York would deliver more cash. Fans here will pay up for a big show, and the Barclays Center recently added swaths of new luxury seating.
Before Monday’s games, Unrivaled CEO Alex Bazzell met with the media and said, “this is already a profitable trip,” including over $1 million in ticket revenue alone.
Natasha Cloud (left) defending Brittney Griner during the Phantom vs. Vinyl semifinal.
Philadelphia keeps a record
He also was unabashed in drawing a straight line from Unrivaled’s success in Philadelphia to going on the road again a few weeks later. This night came together in just three weeks, from landing the building to selling it out.
“To be honest with you, it was somewhat of an internal split room on, ‘Should we pull the trigger on this? Should we not?’” he said. “Coming off Philly and having that great success was one thing, but it was also we had time to strategize and plan [and] had a great partner like Xfinity come in behind it and help amplify it [as a sponsor].”
In the end, the executives trusted their gut and were rewarded.
“This was all organic,” Bazzell said. “We can look at all the data that you want, but, ultimately, the decision came down to: We didn’t play it safe to build this league, so we don’t start playing it safe now. That’s not in our DNA.”
On one count, Brooklyn always was going to land far short of Philadelphia. The Barclays Center is a much smaller venue than Xfinity Mobile Arena, and its full house Monday was 18,261.
So Philadelphia gets something to claim while it waits for its own WNBA team in 2030, and it’s a mark that could stand for a while. Just three pro basketball arenas nationwide have larger capacities: Detroit, Washington, and Chicago.
“Philly was amazing, from everything that I saw and from talking to everybody that came back,” Brittney Griner, a star of Vinyl BC and the Atlanta Dream, said after watching those games from afar. “It looked amazing on TV — they packed out that stadium. It shows how much women’s basketball is growing and there’s a love and there’s a need and people want to come and watch.”
Breanna Stewart, one of Unrivaled’s cofounders, said, “the conversation from the players was just a tremendous amount of appreciation” for the turnout.
“What I think is probably the coolest about Philly is we went to a non-WNBA city,” she said. “People came, and they cared, and whether they had to travel in [or] all those types of things, it showed how big of a deal it is.”
Looking at a return
Of course, the superstar of Mist BC and the New York Liberty admitted her bias toward Brooklyn, as one would expect. And since this was a playoff game, she had to earn the right to play in it.
“Ever since I knew that this was possible … for it to come to fruition and full circle that fast is something that I couldn’t wait to be a part of,” she said. “Like, my team needed to be here in the semis. I didn’t want to come as a spectator; I wanted to be playing.”
Stewart duly delivered, willing Mist to a 73-69 win with a fourth-quarter comeback that had the crowd roaring. She piled up 23 points, eight rebounds, and five assists, dishing the last to Arike Ogunbowale for a game-sealing three-pointer on the Wings star’s birthday.
Bazzell confirmed there are plans to keep touring next season, and there’s a lot of “inbound interest” from potential hosts. He didn’t name specific cities, but he did say preliminary talks with the Barclays Center had started with looking at next year instead of this one.
— Unrivaled Basketball (@Unrivaledwbb) March 3, 2026
He also said “going to cities that really don’t get to see these stars up close” matters. And he threw the door wide-open to a return to Philadelphia, though it might not happen next season
“We want to find our way back to Philly,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s next year, the following year, or the year after — we do want to hit new markets. … There’s obviously other NBA markets we still want to think about going to. So I would anticipate new venues, new cities next year when we do announce our [schedule].”
The last word goes to a player who was a star of both touring nights. Kelsey Plum led Phantom BC to a win in Philadelphia and another here, this time scoring 31 points in an 83-75 victory over Vinyl. A longtime villain in Brooklyn from past years with the Las Vegas Aces, this time she was roundly cheered.
“Basketball cities, right? And I think they just love the game,” she said. “I thought everyone put on a show, and that’s what you want for the fans.”
Why are Americans allowed to place bets on death and destruction?
An advertisement by the American company Polymarket shows Zohran Mamdani and Andrew Cuomo ahead of the New York City mayoral election on Nov. 4, 2025, in New York.
Donald Trump’s splendid and not-so-little war that started during a Saturday rush hour in Tehran and has spread like a coronavirus to numerous other countries is entering its fourth day on Tuesday — far too early for one of journalism’s oldest clichés: the “winners and losers” piece.
Except for these winners: a few “lucky” — if that word can even apply to such a ghoulish enterprise — gamblers who woke up Saturday morning and learned that the first deadly explosions across Iran had already made them a lot richer, regardless of who wins or loses on the battlefield.
The initial weekend of war wasn’t even over before we learned that Polymarket, one of the two leading prediction markets that are the inevitable next downward spiral of our national sports gambling addiction, was hit by suspicious trading by six individuals who showed up to bet big on when the war would commence.
One trader up for particular attention earned a reported $553,000 over the weekend by placing large bets on when Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — killed in the war’s initial minutes, reportedly — would be deposed. The handle on that well-timed, if macabre, gambler? “magamyman.”
My man, you aren’t even trying to hide it.
Polymarket’s brush with possible insider trading on predictive bets over the Iran war that is now a reality came as its customers bet a stunning half a billion dollars on the long-rumored conflict.
Many of them, presumably, are just regular schlubs desperate to get ahead in a dog-eat-dog economy. But it’s also hard not to contemplate that some may have had real advance knowledge of Pentagon war planning that loose-lipped insiders were audibly discussing in Joe’s Stone Crab just hours before the first cruise missile was fired.
I know … it’s shocking that something in America’s death spiral of late-stage capitalism is actually a rigged game, right? Still, it’s hard to decide which is worse about this new low of predictive betting on a war that’s already killed scores of innocent schoolgirls and hospital patients, and at least six U.S. service members: the rank immorality of wagering on death and destruction, or the insider trading that corrupts this already unholy process even further?
Over the weekend, even with the main focus on the latest missile attacks and changing Trump regime explanations for this undeclared war, there was growing outrage over the popularity of predictive betting on the news, especially when the news is deadly. Or, there’s the word the chief U.S. government official tasked with regulating Polymarket, Kalshi, or their rival firms has used to describe what’s happening.
Michael Selig, the lawyer tapped by Trump last year to head the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), which — controversially — regulates these prediction markets, seems less a regulator and more of a cheerleader, maybe as much as “magamyman.” As several states have pushed to regulate or ban predictive markets as akin to sports betting sites, also under its purview, Selig has worked hard to override them with a claim of federal supremacy.
“The CFTC will no longer sit idly by while overzealous state governments undermine the agency’s exclusive jurisdiction over these markets by seeking to establish statewide prohibitions on these exciting products,” Selig wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.
It’s worth noting Selig’s moves came at the same time that six Democratic senators wrote the CFTC chair to urge him to ban gambling on outcomes that result in death or physical harm — inspired by outrage that people were betting on whether a NASA spacecraft would fail to launch, as well as predictions around the fate of the former Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro, seized in January by U.S. troops. Not surprisingly, the high volume of Iran war betting has sparked fresh calls to ban predictive market betting altogether.
“Life stops being something we live, but something we sell and trade,” Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy posted on X, before saying he is studying legislation to ban prediction markets. “It will breed both corruption [and] emptiness.”
Unlike sporting events, betting on political or social developments whose occurrence and timing are controlled and known by humans is incredibly prone to insider trading. In a case that seems to typify the fundamental flaw of non-sports prediction markets, and which Kalshi was forced to acknowledge in an internal investigation, an editor for the wildly popular YouTube star Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast, was caught betting $4,000 on predictions about what MrBeast would say in his next video.
Because betting on influencer video topics is how far off the deep end we are going here. The addictive nature of online sports betting, which was once mostly banned until elite schemers realized how much money was to be made from increasingly desperate people, was always pointing American society in this warped direction.
Zoom out and there’s a much bigger picture here: A society where the traditional pathways to prosperity are rigged for the Epstein class has created an entire ethos that seeks to match that level of wealth through unconventional not-40-hour-workweek paths, like online influencers, or by hitting the big one, whether that’s through buying a meme stock, betting on college basketball, loading up on the right crypto, or — now — gambling on stuff like when Israel is going to bomb women and children in Gaza.
It seems no one near the top of the American kleptocracy is immune to cashing in, including — sigh — Big Media. It was bad enough that CNN partnered with Kalshi to promote predictive odds on events like Tuesday’s Texas primary, but now the venerable Associated Press picked Monday — amid all the negative publicity about the Iran war wagers — to announce its own deal with the site.
Meanwhile, the only safe bet would be a prediction that no one in Washington, D.C., will be able to successfully stop this in the near future. It’s not only that reckless and potentially corrupt get-rich-quick maneuvers like crypto, artificial intelligence, and now these “exciting” predictive markets are simply in the Trump regime’s toxic money-grubbing DNA.
To seal the deal, Donald Trump Jr. joined the advisory board of Polymarket last August, and his venture capital firm, called 1789 Capital, has reportedly invested tens of millions of dollars in the firm, as well. In a remarkable coincidence, two federal investigations into predictive markets that began during the Joe Biden presidency were shut down around the same time.
Today’s dollars stained with blood from the Middle East are the, dare I say it, predictable result. Why merely wage war when you can also wager on it? Our leaders, whether in D.C. or our 50 statehouses, can’t shut down Polymarket, Kalshi, and all their imitators fast enough.
Yo, do this!
Escaping from a global crisis is always a good time to get back to the basics, and for boomers of a certain age, nothing is more fundamental than the power chords and pounding drums of Led Zeppelin. Listening to and thoroughly enjoying Andrew Hickey’s A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs’ two-part episode on how the most classic of all classic rock bands came together at the end of the 1960s made me discover that there’s also an acclaimed 2025 documentary, Becoming Led Zeppelin, streaming on Netflix. Let’s watch it together.
The rising thermometer this week should serve as your reminder that the arrival of March means it’s also time for some baseball that actually counts. The World Baseball Classic, the sport’s World Cup knockoff that comes every three years, starts Thursday and runs through the March 17 final in Miami — site of 2023’s thrilling conclusion in which Japan’s Shohei Ohtani struck out the USA’s (and South Jersey’s) Mike Trout. Some 10 Phillies are competing, including Bryce Harper, Kyle Schwarber, and Brad Keller — on this year’s Team USA — and Dominican Republic ace Cristopher Sánchez, so let the games begin.
Ask me anything
Question: So one school of thought is that they are already trying to steal the midterms; another is that they really can’t. Where are you on the spectrum from mildly worried to totally anxious about this? Especially with Pa. being rather swingy. — Penthesilea (@hansklocker.bsky.social) via Bluesky
Answer: Yes, this is something I’ve already thought about quite a bit, and my answer — for now, anyway — is pretty much smack in the middle of the spectrum. It’s clear Donald Trump intends to use every implement in the voter suppression toolbox — extreme gerrymandering, executive orders aiming to require voter ID, or banning mail-in ballots — that would warp the voting outcomes, without going full Mussolini and canceling the election altogether. But I don’t think that can work for him — partly because any orders will almost certainly be struck down in the courts, but mainly because it looks like a Democratic landslide too large to easily suppress is building momentum. Just look at Texas, where the scheme to gerrymander five new GOP seats depended heavily on Latinos continuing to shift Republican, when polls show the exact opposite happening. Of course, in 2020-2021, few folks thought he would go so far as an attempted coup (I did). Who knows how far he’ll go to maintain power this time around?
What you’re saying about …
Last week’s question about how to handle the new prediction markets — anticipating the mess that occurred with the wagers on the start of the Iran war — and the surge in sports betting drew a tepid response. But it was pretty unanimous that sites like Polymarket and Kalshi should, at the bare minimum, be regulated under state gambling laws, and not as commodities trades — if not banned altogether. Wrote Mary Clare Gumbleton, who would ban Polymarket and Kalshi: “It’s just unregulated corruption and an incredibly awful incentive to both lose your shirt (as it were) and game the system where a handful of corrupt people can make a lot of money.”
📮 This week’s question: There’s only one thing on everyone’s mind: That crazy war in the Middle East. Now that Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have started it, how on earth do we end it? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Iran war end” in the subject line.
History lesson on when the Iran thing really started
A crowd of demonstrators tear down the Iran Party’s sign from the front of its headquarters in Tehran on Aug. 19, 1953, during the CIA-backed coup that ousted Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh and his government. The operation cemented the rule of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi for more than 25 years before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
It’s been a while since the last history lesson in this space, but the poor quality of the TV punditry about the four-day-and-counting Iran war screams out for better information. A lot of the folks advocating for this war of choice in the Middle East argue that we didn’t start the fire, that the roots go all the way back to the 1979 Iranian Revolution. That’s the year when Americans who never paid much mind to foreign affairs were shocked to see huge throngs in the streets of Tehran chanting “Death to America” and taking 52 hostages at the U.S. Embassy.
What did we do to deserve this? Well …
For most historians, and for many Iranians, the year that matters is not so much 1979, but 1953. In a post-World War II geopolitical environment where many nations sought to break free of imperialism, Iran in 1951 democratically elected a surprisingly left-leaning prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, whose main project was to nationalize the then-British-controlled oil industry. This sparked great alarm in London, where U.K. leaders spent months lobbying Washington to join them in an effort to depose Mosaddegh in a coup that would advance Western oil interests.
It’s a messy story. The United States wavered and even flirted with backing Mosaddegh for a time, according to histories of the period, but ultimately British leaders leaned on the Eisenhower administration and America’s ongoing anti-left “Red Scare” of that era to get the relatively new CIA and its man in Tehran — Kermit Roosevelt Jr., grandson of Teddy Roosevelt — on board with the plot. The Americans threw around money and anti-Mosaddegh propaganda, and eventually organized street protests ahead of the government’s ouster.
To be sure, there is a never-ending debate over whether the U.S. involvement was central or just a subplot to the coup that gave power to the shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who ruled the nation with ruthless brutality for the next 26 years. Certainly, the nation’s Islamic clerics — powerful then, as now — played a key part in ousting a secular government. But the American role was so great that Barack Obama apologized in his 2009 Cairo speech, stating as fact that the CIA played a key role in the “overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government.”
Whether the U.S. led the coup or was a bit player, the Iranian people have never forgotten our involvement or our close ties to the eventually despised shah. “The rancor has never melted,” a 24-year-old Iranian woman told the Associated Press in 2023, on the 70th anniversary of the coup, as she compared the American meddling to being “like wishing for an earthquake to get rid of a bad neighbor.”
So did a state of war between the United States and Iran start in 1979, as some GOP lawmakers insist, or in 1953, or on Feb. 28 of this year? In arguably the world’s most violent neighborhood, the cycles of violence often seem to have no beginning and no end. An imperial America chose to jump into the middle of this mess 73 years ago, and now getting out feels more impossible than ever.
What I wrote on this date in 2016
He’s all but forgotten now, but up until his mysterious death 10 years ago, the flamboyant Oklahoma natural gas mogul Aubrey McClendon had reshaped the Pennsylvania landscape as king of the commonwealth’s fracking boom. The company that McClendon (known to sports fans as an owner of the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder) cofounded, Chesapeake Energy, promised riches to Pennsylvania landowners, but left a trail of lawsuits and pollution. Less than 24 hours after his indictment by a federal grand jury, McClendon drove at full speed into a bridge embankment and was killed instantly. I wrote: “In Pennsylvania, Aubrey McClendon is survived by a legacy mostly of conflict, of thick lawsuits, of protesters facing off against armed marshals, of lawmakers and a governor at war over the taxes that gas drillers never had to pay, of brackish water and leaking methane adding to the greenhouse gases that may someday strangle the planet — of a promise of buried treasure that wasn’t really all it was cracked up to be.”
America is now at war on two fronts. In one column, I tackled the ongoing conflict in the streets of America, and looked at the tragic death on a frigid Buffalo street of the Rohingya refugee, Nurul Amin Shah Alam — a disabled and nearly blind man who was arrested by Border Patrol agents, and then dumped at a closed coffee shop five miles from his family’s home. It was a low point that spotlighted the unrelenting cruelty of a xenophobic mass deportation crusade by the Trump regime that has brought a mounting death toll. On Saturday morning, I knocked out my instant reaction to the news that the Trump regime had joined Israel in an all-out attack on Iran, which was that the war is both unconstitutional without the consent of Congress and also a clear violation of international law.
In moments of national and global crisis such as this, it’s easy to forget that many of the political decisions that shape people’s everyday lives occur on the local level. Here in Philadelphia, the school district’s plan to modernize its schools while closing 20 older buildings came as a shock to city parents, and The Inquirer’s coverage, anchored by our Pulitzer Prize-winning city public schools reporter, Kristen A. Graham, has been all over this story. The newsroom has explained the plan in detail, and covered the community protests and the fights over individual buildings, as well as Philly’s move away from middle schools. One advocate told me The Inquirer’s aggressive coverage of the story is why two schools have now been removed from the plan. A healthy community is one that has a vibrant news media. You nurture a better Philadelphia when you support The Inquirer by subscribing.
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Nine firefighters were injured, including one who needed to be carried away on a stretcher, after the floor collapsed beneath them as they fought a two-alarm fire Monday night in the Wynnefield section of Philadelphia.
Firefighters responded to the blaze on the 5300 block of Hazelhurst Street around 10:20 p.m. to find smoke and flames erupting from the roof of the home. Officials confirmed that five firefighters were treated at local hospitals and released, while four remained hospitalized as of Tuesday morning. All were in stable condition.
“We’re immeasurably grateful for this outcome, as collapses often prove devastating,” a Philadelphia Fire Department spokesperson said.
First responders arrived to heavy fire coming from the first floor of the two-story home, officials said. The situation soon grew, bringing more than 100 firefighters, emergency medical services, and support staff to the scene.
The fire spread to the adjoining properties and was placed under control just moments before the structure collapsed on firefighters. At least six residents were displaced from their homes, officials said.
Crews were still on site Tuesday morning working to clear debris and rubble, officials said. The fire marshal’s office will investigate.
Two families, a total of nine residents, were receiving support services from the American Red Cross.
License and Inspection employees inside a fire, 5300 block of Havenhurst Street, Philadelphia, overnight, Tuesday, March 3, 2026. Several fire fighters were injured in this fire.
Before the Wynnefield fire erupted, earlier in the evening in Bristol Borough, a three-alarm fire activated multiple firefighting companies from across the region. One person was killed and another injured in a fire that engulfed several homes.
The Philadelphia Fire Department and the Red Cross urge city and collar county residents to visit soundthealarm.org/philly, where they can sign up for free smoke alarm installations and learn more about preventing fires.
