New Mascot To Cure World Hunger

Swarthmore College is not really known for its athletic teams, and so the school has been a little late in getting a mascot to cheer on the school.

But now that they’ve come up with one — a Phoenix — they have a whole team of students to be it! Cue the super-peppy press release quote: “We’ve really found a very talented group of people who will be highly motivated to promote the mascot and Swarthmore pride!”

The Phoenix, the release says, will not only cheer on the team at sporting events but “is also expected to support philanthropic efforts in the broader community.” Nothing brings out the big donors like a giant flaming bird, let me tell you. (I know from experience: My high school’s nickname was the Firebirds.)

As you can see from the attached graphic, the Phoenix mascot is not just rooted in the mystical bird rising from the ashes, but also the Fonz.

Philly Loses Meaningless Distinction

Despite the best efforts of, ah, Joey Sweeney and uwishunu, Philadelphia has finally slipped enough in population and has fallen behind Phoenix according to the census bureau. Philadelphia has been rumored to have fallen to sixth about 4500 times since 2000, but the Arizona city has finally “officially” passed us.

The complaint, of course, is that Phoenix can annex its suburbs and soon will be as large as the entire state of Arizona. This was the same complaint Philadelphians lodged over a century ago when Chicago passed Philly to become the second largest city in the country. If you’re scoring at home, that means Philly’s been getting screwed for over 100 years and nothing has changed. (The Phillies sucked then, too.)

The Philly metro area (Philly-Camden-Wilmington) has also been passed for fourth place by the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area. It’s probably best to blame Camden here, so that’s what we’re going to do: Hey, Camden! Thanks for knocking us into fifth, you bums!

All hope is not lost, though. While there may be fewer of us, Philadelphia still is fourth in one important category: Time spent in front of the idiot box.

One population category in which the Philadelphia area still can claim fourth place, at least for now, is as a media market. According to Nielsen Media Research, we trail only New York, Los Angeles and Chicago in total potential viewers within range of our local television stations. By the way, Dallas ranks sixth on that score, Phoenix 13th.

Woohoo! Now get us our MLS team so we can stop watching stupid reality shows or whatever. Nah, just kidding, that’s what we’ll do anyway.

Census hits city where it counts [Inquirer]

Screw You, Phoenix: Philly Now 6th Largest City

The Daily News whipped out its calculator recently and apparently realized, according to revised census figures, Philadelphia has finally fallen behind Phoenix in population total.

People will bring up this: Phoenix has the advantage of being able to annex surrounding land to add to the city limits. This is, actually, the same figure Philadelphians complained about in the late 1800s when Chicago passed the city for #2. Of course, without consolidation in 1854, Philly would just be Center City. Okay, enough nerd stuff, time for more Phoenix bashing.

Ooh, real good, Phoenix. Name your city after a mythical bird rising from the ashes. Real good message to send to the kids: It’s okay to play with fire; you’ll merely reappear stronger than before. It’s certainly not as good as “City of Brotherly Love.” A Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon didn’t even wait for the official designation; he’s been calling Phoenix the fifth-largest city since last year. Jerk.

The DN can’t find a Philly-to-Phoenix transplant, apparently, so the paper quotes somebody who moved from Philadelphia to Atlanta, which I suppose is the same thing. The Arizona capital apparently passed Philly sometime around August 2005. But, as the Daily News quotes deputy executive director of the Planning Commission, Gary Jastrzab, “”We have a cultural history. We don’t have water problems.”

So there. Eat it, Phoenix. And you won’t have any water to wash it down with, either!

Philly drops to 6th-largest U.S. city [Daily News]

You’re Next, San Antonio!

Okay, get your talking points ready, people! Phoenix is larger, it can annex land, who the hell wants to live in Phoenix anyway and so forth.

Update: A reader IM’s…

reader: where the hell is nbc10 getting its info???

reader: from NYT:
reader: “The only change in population ranking among the nation’s 10 largest cities was that San Antonio supplanted San Diego in seventh place, although Phoenix came within fewer than 2,500 people of taking over fifth place from Philadelphia, as it will almost certainly do in next year’s estimates.”
pwddmac: i dunno, it’s an ap story
reader: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/21/us/21cities.html
reader: how could the AP or reuters fuck up the same story with conflicting numbers?
reader: (that’s rhetorical, natch)
pwddmac: From the article: “A special mid-decade census in 2005 estimated Phoenix has nearly 1,476,000 residents, up 155,000 from the year 2000.

Census numbers from July 2004 put Philly’s population at 1,470,000 — a number that has been declining by an average of 860 residents a month.”
reader: there is no such thing as a “special mid-decade census” — they’re all estimates for years not ending in 0
reader: stupid AP

So, uhh… yeah, I dunno. After a little searching, I found the AP story came from info from The Arizona Republic. But all I found on that site was a bunch of Philly-bashing articles from by a former Wharton dean. If it weren’t Friday, I’d search a little more — and probably make fun of that ex-Wharton dean — but, uh, well, it’s Friday. And I plan on being asleep or drinking soon.

Phoenix Replaces Philly As 5th Largest City [AP/NBC 10]
List of U.S. cities by population [Wikipedia]