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There’s no place like home!
So let’s say you had applied with your local government for some business licenses, all in the hopes of pursuing your dreams. And let’s say your applications were rejected. Frustrated, you might lodge a complaint. Or file a lawsuit. Or blog about it. But if you live in my dearly-missed hometown of Philly, well, you probably go about things a little bit differently.
Take one Fatai King, a man with a dream. That dream? To operate newstands across the city. In early April, King decided to move forward with his dream by filing 42 application for newsstand licenses with the Philadelphia Department of Licenses and Inspection. When all 42 applications were rejected, King decided to take his dream into his own hands. So on April 23, he rented himself a crane and got down to it. The “it?” Well, he simply used the crane to snatch five newstands and relocate them to corners where he wanted to operate stands.
It should come as no surprise that Fatai King has now been charged with theft and the unlawful taking and receiving of stolen property. My favorite part of the story is the amount of city-space that he covered in his Operation Crane Snatch, from West Philly to Center City all the way up to the North East. Nicely played, Mr. King, nicely played.
And in other local ‘illadelph news, things have taken a turn for the worse for the owner of Geno’s Steaks, one of the famous caddy-corner South Philly cheesesteak meccas (the other mecca being the vastly superior Pat’s King of Steaks). Owner Joey Vento has been under the spotlight of late for his sign advertising that “This is AMERICA…WHEN ORDERING SPEAK ENGLISH.” That spotlight has become more focused now, as the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations has filed a discrimination complaint against Vento and his establishment, on the grounds that the sign is discriminatory and discourages people from asking for cheesesteaks, even if Vento has never actually discriminated against anyone.
All this talk of ordering cheesesteaks in other languages makes me wonder, though, how the hell could you even say “whiz, wit” in any language other than South-Philly-ese.
