Is that near the Naberhood Laundymat?

I have to agree. I had my 30th here and it was so much fun and not that expensive! It's also close to American Sardine Bar if you want an after-party spot.

They didn't use the empty building time to fix the electrical issues either, which is why they keep claiming they can't upgrade buildings to be climate controlled. And no one will tell you where the money goes. I've gone all the way to the top of SDP for answers.

I pass by this place in my work travels, and finally was able to stop in. In my experience, the less flashy a place looks, the better the food usually is. I grabbed a bacon egg and cheese sandwich. It tasted exactly as greasy and good as I expected. I will eat here again.

Cash only.

It's almost as if they could have fixed this before rushing kids back into schools in person

Which is followed up by parents screaming bloody murder about being sent to Strawberry Mansion because it's in a violent dump and is notoriously dangerous for students to be there.

The school district would be better off using the empty space in South Philly High school rather than continuing to try and justify keeping Strawberry Mansion open.

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Check out peerspace. (Like airbnb for event spaces) We had a party for 40 people in Old City for $600 for 6 hours. It had tables and chairs and a fridge, but we had to bring in food and drinks.

No, they’re talking about temporary relocation during remediation. Basically, the School District has a bunch of empty space at Strawberry Mansion HS that’s plan A every time they have to temporarily relocate a school and it takes concerted effort from the school being moved to stop that from happening.

That is a particularly bad Olive Garden too.

Been dragged there more than once unfortunately.

I run a place in South Philly. We tend to get a ton of people off events at the convention center. They tend to bar hopping or passing through, explicitly exploring. Post up at the bar and have a few, ask for recommendations. Or they'll be on a run through all the breweries, or all the cheese steak places or whatever in a given section.

Explicitly exploring.

The bulk of Americans are going to stick to the familiar. The kinda people looking for the Chili's are probably eating at the Chili;s at home. We're a nation of people that will go to Italy just to eat at Olive Garden.

But Philly is pretty compact, and it's pretty easy to pick a direction and explore. The people who can make the time and don't subsist off McDonald's are spreading around.

We actually get a ton of people on layovers from the Airport as well.

"Relocation"
Do they mean Remediation?

I would say it compares favorably to the Javit's center in Manhattan.

The Javit's is a few blocks North West of Penn Station/MSG. But it's kind of a pain to get to unless you're already nearby, and it's in a bit of a no-mans land in terms of anything else worth doing.

Javit's looks more impressive from the street. And it's been a bit since I've been in either. But recall Philly being laid out better, and it seemed more flexible.

I worked an event for a friend in Boston's convention center years ago. I remember that being impossible to navigate and not real accessible to anything we wanted to do on our off time. Lotta long cab rides.

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There was already a convention hall in Philly starting in the 30s. It simply became too small and large scale events started moving to other parts of the city, like at sports stadiums.

This sort of things is de rigueur for cities of any size. Large, centralized, public venues for public events, businessy junk etc. Tends to feed hotel and restaurant business in surrounding areas, goes hand in hand with corporate offices and fostering industry. But also more public good stuff like entertainment events, political conventions etc.

Having this in a centralized location draws that action to a down town, rather than scattering it around the city. Where infrastructure might not be up to large scale events. Or events going even further afield. It's better for Philly to have a big comic convention, that car show that just went down or the like right in center city. Than to have that go down in some big corporate hotel off in King of Prussia. And it's more desirable for the groups doing these events to be in the middle of a city, with direct connections to airports, public transit, nearby hotels and amenities.

Prior to the current convention center the area was mostly a storage yard for Reading Terminal. Though the project famously, and controversially ate part of China Town and had some negative impacts on the community there. Part of why the idea of putting an arena in the Fashion District building is a heated topic.

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>looks empty 90% of the time.

You are forgetting the pandemic. That thing was pretty much closed for 2 years straight. And the sort of events it's meant for have not fully ramped up even now. A lot of things are tracked back, or operating virtually even now.

Prior to COVID there was almost always something going on there. Though with any convention center most of what's going on tends not to be huge events that fill up the whole thing. And many of the events that get hosted at these places are not public. The annual meeting of the state's CPA association isn't really going to garner much attention, even if there are thousands of people attending.

That said there's actually quite a lot going on there recently. I know there's been some food and beverage industry events going down this year, the car show. The flower show was back there this year.

And as goes pertinent anecdotes. I know a guy who works for a table top gaming company out of NYC. He's been to 3 industry events at the convention center in the last 6 months, non-public ones. Tradeshows effectively. Producers, distributors and retailers setting up and pitching/finding new product. Break out discussions about industry trends. Boring shit! But also an MTG fan event of some sort that went down.

His boss is pressuring him to return to Brooklyn, and start working from their office every day. Part of how he justifies not doing that, which he can't afford, is how easily he can get to what are considered pretty critical industry events that go down in Philly. As well as how much easier it is to travel to similar events in other cities.

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>And honestly it doesn't seem to me that even when these big crowds come in that they're willing to explore the city.

I will actually dispute that. I manage a bar here. Whenever an event goes down at the convention center we see a lot of people passing through who are exploring the city on their way to and from or on down time. And we're nowhere near Center City.

Had a really nice guy who ran a specialty plant store in Baltimore, in for the flower show, yesterday.

I know some of the staff at Milk Boy. This is part of why they open so early and do breakfast. Between offices and shit like the convention center they do reliable trade shockingly early for what is basically a craft beer bar.

You cant really afford anything in the suburbs or the city that will meet all your needs unless you move to the exurbs like the perimeter of the metro area or Northeast Philly and then a garage is unlikely. More likely you'll have a parking lot and will be living in an economically depressed area or an apt building. 100K combined is really nothing here in the metro area. The Median household income in the collar counties of Philly is $75K+, with Chester County being 100k+. Include gas, tolls, CoL adjustment from Ohio you'll probably be scraping by honestly.

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Well I am incorrect and I am admitting it... they recently made a change where exhibitors can do a lot more of their own setting up and a lot less dealing directly with the unions, which in turn has increased the amount of conventions and exhibits over the past 2 years.

It does not get used as much as it should and could. The massive amount of Labor unions and fees it costs to run a convention there has chased a lot of them to Oaks Pa and other outskirts of the city.

You really don't have much of a clue what you're talking about

Thanks for posting this. I saw them while walking my dog in south Philly and had no idea what they were. Pulled out my phone just in time to take a worthless picture. Awesome aircraft.

My fart wind

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