Philadelphia, PA

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, restaurant owners in the Bay Area are upset over patrons demanding free food in exchange for good reviews on Yelp.

Yes, that’s right, people are blackmailing restaurants into giving them free food. If the restaurants don’t comply, they’re threatened with a bad review on Yelp. From an email from a restaurateur:

Customers have begun threatening to ‘Yelp’ the restaurant if their demands are not met. Cafe Rouge experienced this phenomenon twice within the past month when comps were demanded with the threat that a harsh review would follow on the Yelp website if we didn’t comply. The expectation of how much to comp is also at issue, where a glass of wine, an appetizer or dessert no longer suffices. People do follow through on their threats as we have witnessed. When most restaurants are struggling to pay the bills in a recession economy, bad publicity is the last thing we want to see. On the other hand, comping lavishly in response to overt threats affects the bottom line.

I wonder if I could get free food by telling restaurants that I write for a semi-known Philadelphia, PA blog. Doubt it.

Severe thunderstorms yesterday afternoon knocked out power to thousands in the Philadelphia area and struck buildings and beachgoers at the Jersey Shore.

A lifeguard and a young girl were struck on a Cape May beach at 1:16 p.m. while running away from the storm, the Cape May Beach Patrol said.

Lightning strikes caused numerous structure fires in Cape May County and the Egg Harbor Township area of Atlantic County.

The National Weather Service measured wind gusts of 43 m.p.h. at Philadelphia International Airport and hail as large as golf balls in Brooklawn, Camden County.

In Cape May, the lightning victims were treated by the Cape May Fire Department and taken to the Cape Regional Medical Center, where they were listed in stable condition last night.

On July 19th Alycia Lane sued KYW-TV, claiming that the station exploited her, tore her down, and defamed her on her way out the door. Ouch.

Lane is seeking unspecified damagers, the former anchor alleges in a complaint filed in Common Pleas Court that management “turned a blind eye” toward leaks of personal information after she repeatedly voiced concerns about “security breaches” in her private email. She also alleges that management engaged in “deep seated gender discriminatory animus” toward her and other female employees. Wow.

Lane uses the lawsuit to spell out for the first time her side of her downfall at CBS3. She claims that the breaches of her email began in early 2006, when the New York Post reported that she was cozying up to Prince Albert of Monaco.

The lawsuit also tells Lane’s side of the May 2007 scandal after the Post wrote that she was chastised by the wife of the sportcaster Rich Eisen for sending him photos of herself in a bikini.

Besides the station, station manager Michael Colleran and two defendants called John Doe and Jane Doe are named in the filing by her attorney, Paul Rosen of Spector Gadon & Rosen.

Lane’s co-anchor, Larry Mendte, is not a defendant. The complaint alleges that Mendte was “obsessively jealous” of her “growing popularity and success” and resented her higher salary. Her compensation is thought to have been $100,000 above his $700,000 a year, according to station sources.

A KYW-TV spokeswoman said the station had not seen the complaint and had no further immediate comment.

Lane’s suit claims that a statement from Colleran that Mendte read on-air on Jan. 7 killed her career.

It read in part: “After assessing the overall impact of a series of incidents resulting from judgments she has made, we have concluded that it would be impossible for Alycia to continue to report the news as she, herself, has become the focus of so many news stories.” It added, “We understand that Alycia expects to be fully vindicated in that proceeding” in New York.

The suit says the “clear meaning” was that Lane was “now unable to report the news for any news station anywhere in the world.”

I’ve been so busy this weekend that I haven’t had the opportunity to right anything, but I didn’t want to leave you with nothing. I was given a screener of The Dark Knight and was able to give it a review over at omigod.net, so go check it out.

I’ll be back Monday.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that there were three skinny, sheepish teenagers, pushing the limits of adolescence but not yet men. Ok, for one thing, if I was described as “sheepish” I may be offended. I don’t know if that’s just me.

A thirty eight year old Bucks County mother was ordered held for trial on a variety of sexual assault charges.

Angela Honeycutt of Lower Makefield Township is accused of engaging in sexual acts with two of the boys (the sheepish boys), ages fourteen and fifteen years old. The “crimes” allegedly occurred during a teen sleepover last April at the home of a female friend of Ms. Honeycutt’s, who lived in the neighborhood.

The “sheepish” boys testified that Ms. Honeycutt had danced provocatively, discussed sex with them, and kissed two or three of them before “disrobing” and heading for the shower.

She had asked the boys if any of them wanted to join her in the shower. The fifteen year old boy said that he wasn’t planning on having sex when he entered the bathroom with her. The boy said that “other stuff happened” and he changed his mind.

Blah, blah blah, the same old stuff.

One of the boys ended up engaging in two sexual acts in the shower with Ms. Honeycutt, but did not have intercourse, but than one of the boys did have intercourse with her (?).

(more…)

I don’t think there’s anything I can say…

Philly.com’s Poll about homelessness:

From yesterday the polls are still roughly the same.

Yes, the one with the lowest number of responses was, of course, about helping people. And the #1 response was wondering why the city didn’t do something about it. I guess if you pay your taxes…

The government made it official yesterday and charged Larry Mendte with reading Alycia Lane’s email; apparently, doing so is a felony.

Mendte was charged with one count of intentionally accessing a protected computer without authorization. Authorities allege he checked Lane’s email 537 times (in a frickin’ row?!) after getting her password.

“As we continually have said from day one, Larry has been cooperating fully with the investigators. He continues to cooperate and will accept full responsibility for his actions,” Mendte’s lawyer said. Blah, blah, blah, jailtime is probably unlikely.

Coffee enthusiasts twitched yesterday when they heard that nine of 115 cafe’s in the Philadelphia area will be closing.

When one Starbucks goes down, there’s a new one right around the corner, so don’t worry.

A lot of people aren’t quite sure why Starbucks is having to close some of its stores, here’s the reason. The Seattle company that transformed coffee from a mud-slurping morning routine to a daily luxury indulgence is now closing a big batch of outlets to stem losses.

The reason why? Location.

Three of the nine stores on the Starbucks list in the Philadelphia region are on Route 611 in Montgomery and Bucks Counties, two within a mile in Willow Grove.

There’s so many around, it’s crazy though.

For example, in downtown Willow Grove, where Weinrich’s Bakery on route 611, there is a Starbucks across the street from him in a bookstore, one in a nearby mall and one in a supermarket.

Then, there are two more near the naval air station up the road. Don’t forget the two that are closing, on the 1100 and 2700 blocks of Route 611.

When a retailer opens too many stores in a geographic area, they run into the risk of “cannibalizing” their operations. That is, one store ends up eating into the sales of another.

There total number of Starbucks locations is listed at 600 stores. 70 percent of those stores have been open since 2006. Five of the nine closing in Philadelphia opened in 2006 or later.

Starbucks has become such a powerful part of people’s lives that the impending closures made headlines in cities nationwide yesterday.

An estimated of 180 area Starbucks employees will lose their jobs once the espresso machines are stored away.

Ridley Township Detective Sgt. Scott Willoughby thought he had seen it all during his 18 years on the force.
Then he met James Jones.

The 46-year-old township resident, who is being held at the Delaware County Prison on animal-cruelty charges, stabbed his dog “Baby” to death Sunday night with a 30-inch samurai-style sword, according to authorities.

His wife, Pamela, said he had been threatening to kill the 3-year-old American bulldog mix for several weeks, and that he finally made good on that threat in their Holland Street home.

She had rescued the dog from the Delaware County SPCA when it was a puppy, but she couldn’t save Baby from her husband.

“She wasn’t going to bite him, wasn’t going to attack him,” Pamela Jones said of the family dog. “He stabbed her in her heart and there was blood squirting all over the place, then all four of her legs got wobbly and she fell to the floor and she bled to death on the floor. Her tongue came out of her mouth and she was gone. I couldn’t even help her.”

Police say Jones had accidentally struck the dog in the head, causing it to growl at him, and that he became enraged.

“You see a lot of crazy things,” said Willoughby, a former K-9 officer, “but to kill your own dog with a sword? Jesus Christ!”

Willoughby said that the dog was sitting upright when it was stabbed and the blade went 8 inches into its chest.

“And then he stabbed it again,” he said.

Jones was arraigned Monday by Senior Magisterial District Judge Leonard McDevitt Sr. and was transported to the George W. Hill Correctional Facility after he failed to post 10 percent of $25,000 bail.

Pamela Jones, who has been married to James for 15 years, immediately sought a temporary protection-from-abuse order, and it was granted Monday while her husband was still in custody of Ridley police. She plans to get a divorce because of the incident.

Police confiscated 20 daggers and 10 swords from the house.

“It could have been me,” she said of the stabbing. “I’m going to serve him the [divorce] papers when I have to go testify against him in court.”

Meanwhile, two sisters of James Jones said he is an animal lover - not just dogs, but iguanas, lizards, ferrets and other creatures - who was born and raised in Chester and served in the Army as a young man.

“He loved animals. I don’t believe it,” said one sister, Frances Jones.

“It’s very sad if he did it,” said another sister, Janet Brown. “What was going through his mind?”

Does he seriously think our economy is growing?

Please, get him out of that house.

You can dry your eye’s kids…

It won’t be long until about-philadelphiapa.com is fully back up.

“OK, last week I was in Atlanta installing our new servers. Everything is installed and powered up. This week expect to have a lot of downtime. We will be moving sites and databases all this week. We will also be upgrading to the newest version of WordPress. The plan is to have everything moved and back up and working 100% before COB on Friday. As of today I feel really good that we will reach this goal.

Thanks”

That come straight from the mouth (?) of the 451 Press owner. For those of you who are sticking around to see when about-philadelphiapa.com will work again, I applaud you, and thank you. Look forward to every day blogs again soon.

The past week or few you may have noticed that I haven’t been posting as much as I normally do. I have previously posted that 451 Press is going through some technical difficulties, and, well, those technical difficulties haven’t ended. I am going to take a short break until 451 Press has all of their problems straightened out. If you are one of the few readers that has decided to stick around even though sometimes my blog won’t load, thank you. As you can imagine all of the problems that seem never ending are incredibly frustrating to me, but I’m trying hard not to give up. The minute I get the clear that every problem is solved I will than start posting at least five to six times a day.

For now come visit me at omigod.net.