Camden To Have New Hotel?

Did you know: There are zero hotels in Camden. None. Really! (Where do opponents of the Cmaden RIversharks stay?) Ever since the Plaza Hotel closed in 1985, Camden has been hotel-less.

The New York Times reports a group of developers is looking to build a 140-room Hilton Garden Inn — there’s one in Philadelphia on top of the Filbert Street parking garage near Chinatown — on Camden’s waterfront.

What better place for people following around Pearl Jam or whoever this summer to stay when the band plays the concert venue on the waterfront, now called the Susquehanna Bank Center for some reason. That, and people who don’t want to pay to stay in Philadelphia.

But will one hotel save Camden?

“A hotel can start to leverage quite a bit,” said William H. Hudnut III, a senior resident fellow at the Urban Land Institute, an education and research group in Washington, D.C. “It brings people, and it brings rooftops — restaurants, bars and eateries. One hotel won’t do the trick, but it’s certainly a positive piece in the jigsaw.”

Okay, so: No. But, hey, it’s a start. Maybe that family that fled Camden on Extreme Makeover is now selling their Pennsauken house to move back in to the city! No, wait, probably not.

In a Faded City, Plans to Build a Hotel Build Hope [New York Times]
Home built for ‘Extreme Makeover’ for sale [AP via Iracane]
[Photo via Jessica Kourkounis/New York Times]

Go Play RPS In Camden

You kids like Camden, right? Neighbor just across the river from Philadelphia, perennial competitor with Pittsburgh in the competition for city that Philadelphians make most jokes about, home of summer festival concerts. Of course you like Camden.

Well, this Saturday is Philadelphia Rock Paper Scissors League Day at the Camden Riversharks, the independent minor league baseball team. As the Riversharks website says, “This season, the team will try a lot of new ideas that have never been done in Camden or any of the other parks in the area.” Indeed!

There’s an RPS tournament, unlimited wings and beer from 4-6 and a game at 5 p.m. The tournament will begin “around 3,” which could mean anytime from 3 p.m. to June 26.

But better yet, who will be refereeing at this tournament? That’s right: Yours truly, the competitor formerly known as This Rock is a Pipe Bomb, Danny Awesome. (That’s my new name.) As you know, last time I tried to referee I ended up heckled by superior RPS players, was featured in a documentary about RPS and won a second place award in the state for the article I wrote about it. I can only assume this time I will not only ref, but I will win the entire tournament. (Yes, I’m playing also.)

As an update, Philadelphia Will Do’s sponsorship of the timeouts for the RPS city league is going swimmingly so far; and I’m in 12th so far this year. I’m also working on an Elo rating-style system for RPS, because I am the biggest freaking nerd in the universe.

Philadelphia Is Not Camden, Please

Dan Gross has a nice little piece today about a Diane Sawyer special last night on ABC. Apparently, the program kept saying “outside Philadelphia” and “back in the streets of Philadelphia,” even though all the filming was done in Camden. Whoops!

Gross also gets the requisite non-apology for lying that is standard for television.

“The program described Camden, N.J., as ‘outside Philadelphia’ because, as the closest major city, we felt it would give our national audience a better understanding of the location,” an ABC spokeswoman said yesterday. “At one point during the two-hour program, we did say that we were ‘back in the streets of Philadelphia,’ which was an error that we apologize for.”

I’m going to go watch some Lost episodes from BitTorrent. Oh, sorry, I was just giving my audience a better understanding of how to watch TV shows.

Diane Sawyer tapes Camden hookers, says they’re in Philly [Phillygossip]
Archives: Camden, Pennsylvania

Happy Easter!

On Good Friday, Camden Catholics performed the Stations of the Cross in the streets of Camden, which is pretty much what I picture Golgatha to be like, I guess. And, as you can see, a naked — or at least shirtless — made sure to watch the procession as it passed his house. Happy Easter!

‘Stations of Cross’ reaches out to residents [Courier-Post]
[Photo via C-P/Douglas Bovitt]

El Toro, Bob Will Reign Protest Bureaucracy

We don’t have too much political graffiti here in the good ol’ US of A, only a couple of anti-war signs and more anti-war signs. But don’t fix a bridge in New Jersey, and somebody in Camden will make a statement!

The “historic” State Street Bridge is “fresh off its latest round of structural damage” and has been out of service since Aug. 20. It also closed during 1999 and 2004. And though residents thought the bridge was important enough to fix right away, nobody seemed to help them. So a resident took his spray can and the Camden Courier-Post infuriatingly didn’t show us the whole message.

“If the State St. Bridge were in Cherry Hill or Haddonfield it would have been fixed in one day. Where are your politicians now?” it read.

Where’s your messiah now, Camden? The graffiti was sadly removed due to “unauthorized use of the pavement,” like those kids from my high school who spray-painted the school’s initials on I-95 a few years back.

Historic city bridge to be fixed [Camden Courier-Post]

Ride The Ducks To Expand, Blob-Like

Having made trillions in the tourism/plastic duck bill quacker industry, the people at Ride the Ducks are attempting to branch out, probably because when they say “I own Ride the Ducks” they get punched in the face. And, naturally, the next logical step after “duck boats” is “aquariums,” so the Ride th Ducks people are hoping to purchase the Adventure Aquarium.

The aquarium, former the Camden Aquarium or New Jersey State Aquarium or something, appeals to five-year-olds who like the word “adventure.” This makes it a logical purchase for RtD’s owners (Herschend Family Entertainment Group), because then they’ll own something in the area people actually don’t hate. (Tourists, as you may remember, love Ride the Ducks because it signed the Declaration of Independence.)

After purchasing the Camden Aquarium, the Ride the Ducks people will be able to send their passengers over to Camden, where the boats will hopefully break down and leave them stranded.

“Ride the Duck” Owners Interested in NJ Aquarium [KYW 1060]
Monday: Tourists Deserve Your Scorn As Much As You Thought

Everyone At Camden Catholic Wins Masters

Shocking news in Camden New Jersey, as a local Catholic school is making its students adhere to a dress code!

Ahh, yes, what a shocking development. A Catholic school being overly concerned with uniforms or a dress code? No!

Camden Catholic High School’s top administrators have implemented a new dress code that bars incoming freshman girls from wearing pants as part of their school uniform and prohibits both sexes in all grades from wearing polo-style shirts.

And for the first time since the 1970s, incoming freshman and successive classes will don a green blazer as part of their school uniform: button-up shirt and tie for boys, button-up blouse and plaid kilt for girls.

I went to a ritzy — squirrels did come into the school and chew the windows, so I guess it wasn’t all that ritzy — all-boys Catholic high school in the suburbs, and while we didn’t have a uniform, we all had to adhere to a slacks/shirt/tie/blazer in the winter dress code. (If you forgot your belt or wore white socks, you’d have to clean up after lunch.)

As such, I am well aware of the Catholic school penchant to worry about unimportant things like whether your top button of your shirt is buttoned. But since I had to wear a blazer in high school, these punk kids nowadays should have to wear one, too. All the better if they have to wear a hideous green jacket, a style usually only found on Masters winners.

The polo shirt ban has become controversial, apparently, because students don’t want to have to wear ties all year and, as kids, they like to whine a lot. (Duh. Weren’t you a kid at one point? If you’re reading this blog, aren’t you mentally one now?) Students passed around petitions asking to be able to continue to wear polo shirts, but the administrators ignored them because it’s Catholic school.

Camden Catholic tightens dress code [Camden Courier-Post]

Camden: Home Of Running Water

Soccer sure has changed a lot since I last played it; point of the game used to be to put the ball in the net.

Oh, and this quote, from the team’s coach:

“At least in Third World countries they get full uniforms,” Walter said. “They support their sports. Every single team has a uniform because they represent their school.”

Camden: Not as good as a third-world country, at least in terms of soccer jerseys.

Soccer team’s goal: Get jerseys [Camden Courier-Post]

Can’t Stop The Music

Rule number one of transporting cocaine: Don’t do anything stupid that would let the cops into your card. I don’t really know if that’s rule number one, but, hey, it seems like it’d make a good first rule.

Regardless, the Glassboro’s Wilbert Lopez was allegedly carrying 19 bags of cocaine in his SUV when he crashed into a crowd of people at the XPoNential Music Festival just over the river in Camden on Saturday. He allegedly rear-ended a car before continuing down the street and crashing right into the center of the festival, smashing into a Ben & Jerry’s stand (funny) and a little girl (not as funny).

The show, however, must go on.

On Sunday, Roger LaMay, general manager of Philadelphia’s WXPN-FM, said most festival visitors he spoke with didn’t even know about the incident. “Fortunately there were no serious injuries… and the show continued and there were no disruptions,” LaMay said.

That’s right, folks: No car crash could stop Robert Hazard’s 8:20 p.m. set. Phew!

Man charged in music festival crash [Camden Courier-Post]

So This Is What NJ Residents Do After Leaving Old City

There’s not really much I can do with this article about Camden’s streets at night from the Courier-Post so I’ll just print a few of the excerpted quotes.

• The harsh, bright lights illuminated a crowd milling near the Crown Fried Chicken on Mount Ephraim Avenue.

  Inside, Tara Kittrell, 28, wore a tight-fitting white T-shirt with the words “Baby Sex” on it. After a night on the town at a Philadelphia club, she was back in Camden, trying to explain why it’s important to keep the late-night fast food restaurants open — even though some officials say they are magnets for crime and should close by 1 a.m.

  “People go out. They get drunk. They want to get something to eat,” Kittrell said. “They got to feed their liquor. They don’t want to be going home, throwing up all over the place. They got to eat so they don’t get no hangovers.”

• “Yeah, I’m concerned. But I’m watching my head before I’m watching someone else’s,” said Pop Marcus, 20. “Shooting? Yeah. That’s daily here. . . . But it’s survival of the fittest, dog eat dog. . . . Everybody wants to get out, eventually, but you got to deal with the situation at hand.
• As he leaned against the doorway of the takeout restaurant, Jose Rosa took a long drink from a plastic bottle and complained that the Camden police are picking on him and his friends.

  On this cool, quiet evening, just a short time before the nearby bars will close, Rosa, 50, says he’s feeling a little resentful about an incident earlier that night.

  The police shouldn’t have asked him and his friends to stop drinking in public, he says.

  “We’re not the problem,” he says, in Spanish-accented English. “It’s the jitterbugs.”

  Jitterbugs?

  “This is a stick-up place,” he says of his neighborhood. He blames the “jitterbugs,” which is his name for the young, nervous, armed bandits who pull guns and steal from people in the community.

Uh, I’m pretty sure that last one is his derogatory term for black people, but whatever.

Camden streets at night [Courier-Post]