At no point was I talking about net profits. Just revenue (which is why I said words like “revenue”). Like a lot of businesses, the past couple years have been a mess. I dunno if you noticed, but some shit was going down in 2020 and 2021 in Aramark's industry. But they’re a multi-billion dollar global corporation that makes money, and lots of it, more often than it doesn’t.

If you want to go lecture their lawyers and financial team about their “basics”, I can tell you where to find them (hint, drive outside the city limits and start knocking on the doors of mansions).

Now, if you want to argue that last years earnings mean that John Zillmer doesn’t deserve to be taking $1,118,750 from the city back home to Chester County in base salary, plus bonuses, stock options, and other benefits, we can agree on that.

Huh, I did make a mistake. I didn’t see their most recent annual report, which has upped the figure to 16.3 billion in revenue.

I also just looked for info on their senior Vice President. She lives in the “greater Philadelphia area” (aka the PA suburbs in counties outside Philly).

The richest person in the state is the guy behind the Philadelphia-based Susquehanna International Group.

Ya wanna guess where he lives? Cause I can tell you where he doesn’t! And where do you think his highest paid staff live?

The wealth of Philly’s suburbs is, in large part, extracted from the city. Philly provides those counties with low wage labor that they don’t have to subsidize but Philly does (60% of Philly’s reverse commuters make $40,000 or less annually), educates and provides jobs for their their professional classes, and provides a commercial center that generates wealth for those counties’ richest residents.

The CEO of Aramark, one of the city’s biggest employers? A company whose HQ is in Philly and makes 14.6 billion annually? Chester county. Where do you think his top execs live? I only bothered looking up the CFO and one other - but it’s not Philly! They’re all in wealthy PA suburbs

As of 2019 (the most recent public data), 47 percent of all jobs in the city are held by people from outside the county. That’s factually true, and it’s a massive percentage. There are a lot of reverse commuters, but it’s 40 percent, which is fewer.

And a lot of that is little money. I reverse commute to Delaware, and my income isn’t moving anyone’s needle.

When it comes to the great big engines of commerce in the city, where huge amounts of money is being made, particularly in property development, the developers are building in the city from offices in the suburbs, using labor that lives in the suburbs (affiliated with unions in the city), whose contracts are negotiated by lawyers from the suburbs (who went to UPenn).

Philly’s biggest law firms are full of lawyers from the burbs. Its massive medical complexes are staffed by doctors that went to school here and work here, but live juuust over the border.

Ok. Where is their money coming from then? Is it just a coincidence that a massive percentage of Philly’s workforce is commuting from neighboring counties? Or that so many of the companies managing and flipping Philadelphia properties have LLCs registered in neighboring counties? Or that those counties are full of doctors and lawyers that graduated out of Philadelphia’s school systems?

Where do you think the Toll Brothers, one of the city’s biggest developers are located? You think they’d be in the top five developers in the country and in the Fortune 500 without Philly? They are ALL UP in the city’s shit, and they live and incorporate everywhere but here.

That’s not entirely an unfair read, though. Without Philadelphia, the wealthy commuter counties surrounding Philadelphia would also be “hick towns”

This one is a little tricky - finding out which counties contribute more tax dollars than they deliver to the state is public information. There are actual figures that state which counties contribute more than they take and which don't.

By and large, the most rural and reddest counties receive more in aid than they deliver in taxes, and are generally surrounded by other similar counties that do the same. Not a hard and fast all counties thing, as there are red counties bordering cities that don't do the same, but that's the trend.

Philadelphia also receives more in aid than it contributes in taxes. But it is surrounded by layers of counties that contribute more than they take. Pittsburgh's county makes more than it takes, and is, not coincidentally, also surrounded by counties that do the same, though it's effect is much shallower.

Philadelphia is a poor county that requires more aid than it generates for itself (though the qualifier re: SEPTA, which serves the surrounding counties as well, is worth noting).

But a map of "makers vs. takers" shows a geographically tiny county that's generating a lot of wealth for people that commute into it (the money coming out of Montgomery, Bucks, etc. isn't due to their status as major centers of commerce - they're where the well-off people that work in Philadelphia, or work in industries reliant on Philadelphia live), and those people are creating counties that deliver more than they take.

I’m medium-handy, medium/high-crafty, and have worked at the professional level as an instructor in a few fields, so I’ve been roped into doing low-level things like this for friends.

I’d never do it for a stranger, and will now only do it for friends if the task is extremely basic. I think the last thing I did was teach someone how to use a mitre saw and then let them watch, fetch stuff, and hold shit in place while I finished a project, and then did it again on a smaller scale so she could do a little more the second time and she’d have something to take home.

So, quite literally twice the work, each time taking longer than it would if done solo.

My high-crafty and high-handy friends feel almost the same way about teaching me stuff, I’m sure, though they’re happy to team up on shit that’s within my limits and show me how to elevate it just a touch.

A one-on-one situation would be very expensive, and rightfully so. You’d be paying that person’s base hourly rate, plus the fee for doing something frustrating.

But group classes at somewhere like the West Philly Tool Library that you can supplement with online tutorials once you get the basics down seems within reach.

I thought the same thing. That’s not the defense you think it is my ma’am.

No. Anything not built with city funds, or not on city-owned property doesn’t get passed through the Commission.

They get only get oversight over streeteries because they’re located on public streets

‘Tis a mighty lift indeed, and their purview is, in fact, narrow.

They only have authority if city funds or public space is involved, IIRC

Yeah, that sucks. But it’s the kind of problem that emerges when organizations move too quickly and don’t communicate well with one another. I don’t see how compounding the problem by rushing and making inconsistent mistakes now will help. If they rush it and one restaurant gets denied for something that slips through and is ok somewhere else, shit isn’t going to get less confusing.

But given that I know you can, and I’m just some asshole that spends too much time in bars and restaurants, any restaurant operator that doesn’t know it by now has bigger problems than the streetery license.

As long as they can stay open while an application is pending (they can), I see no problem with agencies being slow and deliberate during the early stages to make sure they get a new process right.

It’s a pretty natural extension of responsibilities they already have.

The board is part of the city’s Department of Planning and Development and is supposed to vet the structures (and other forms of development) to make sure it “is beautiful, orderly, and appropriate so that the City is a desirable place to live, visit, and do business.”

Murals and public art and stuff like that is only part of their job. One of the big complaints about streeteries has been that they either look like shit from the start, or are built cheap and look like shit in two months. So part of the approval process goes through the agency whose job it is to tell business that their janky crap looks like shit.

But even the most pro-choice advocates are in favor of regulating and requiring standards of abortion providers and medical centers to the ensure safety of patients.

Nobody is arguing that the bar for providing abortions (particularly surgical options), or for storing medicines and medical supplies, be as low as the current bar for opening a gun shop and storing inventory.

The analogy would be that gun shops should also be subject to rigorous standards to ensure safety, even if that means that fewer shops exist.

I’d agree that “we can legislate away guns by making it impossible to sell them” doesn’t pass muster.

But “stores that sell deadly weapons should be closely monitored and require a reasonable but high standard of care re: sales and inventory storage, even if it presents a burden” is not incompatible with pro-choice arguments.

If that opens the door to legislating them out of states and towns by creating unrealistic expectations solely to overburden existing enterprises, that’s on the right and their judges for opening that door and enshrining it as a precedent. Maybe they shouldn’t have done that.

I’m reading it as “the group that showed up to steal the guns was mostly teens, with two adults” but additional adults were named in the affidavit that are associated with the group, and may have provided assistance before or after the burglaries.

For example, “Angel Mason, 40, faces charges connected to thefts of firearms from Pennsylvania gun stores.”

It is an awkward section though, and does require interpretation

You could do that with fake temporary dealer tags before the bill too, though.

If this information still exists at UPenn, it’s in the University Archives. You can just call them and ask if it’s extant and publicly available.

You’re also welcome to dm me his name and birth date, as well as hers. If ancestry.com captured them in census records or directories, or if they showed up in local papers, I have access to databases for work, and it’s a quick search

The IGA just a little further south on Aramingo also has it in the Bob's Red Mill section, and can be a little easier to get in and out of, especially if OP is getting out this way via 95.

Oof. That’s awful. I didn’t know that.

Depending on what variety of shit talking they do and kind of NJ they are, a casual lunch at La Colombe might work. They do have a small beer and cocktail menu, and the food is fine.

I don’t know that I’d consider it “impressive” like Suraya, but it is the kind of place that I’d appreciate if I was working nearby, so it’d be a good “show you around spot” for a more casual visit.

Rustica and B&B do. The other two (which I prefer), don’t open til at least 4 on weekdays. Though for some reason, I think Rustica is take out/delivery only now. I don’t know why I think that though.

Both are good, but neither is open at lunch during the weekday.

OP is going to have similar challenges in Northern Liberties, to be honest, though it would maybe add a few options. The weekday lunch scene in the Riverwards is pretty limited if you’re not just doing a grab and go kind of thing.

Front St might work. Depends what the nature of what the NJ folks’ issue with the city is.

Yeah, I’m a big fan of taking a day off work every now and then and treating myself to a solo lunch date with drinks, somewhere within walking or biking distance.

It’s a lot harder in the Riverwards than it used to be. A few places are an option if I pick the right day, but for the most part, my options are limited, especially now that Memphis Tap is leaving.