Frankford Community Blog | Local News, Events, Community Resources
Just searching Frankford on ebay let to this interesting treasure. It’s a 1 lb coffee tin can from our own Unity-Frankford Grocers. Here’s the link, it’s for sale for 30 bucks. This thing is just dieing to be used for change on my desk at work, but 30 is a little steep for me. Somebody buy and bring it home to Frankford.
[link] http://cgi.ebay.com/VIN-FRANKFORD-UNITY-1-LB-COFFEE-TIN-CAN-PHILA-PA-1950
FROM: Greenwood Cemetery Board of Directors
Knights of Pythias Greenwood Cemetery will host a community discussion on the potential use of the historic Benjamin Rush house. The house has been inhabitable for many years however; under new ownership the cemetery has plans to renovate and restore the house. Please see www.kpgreenwoodcemetery.org for the full details.
The guest facilitator will be Ann Barton Brown. Ms. Brown brings a wealth of knowledge, including thirty-five years experience as a curator, collections manager, strategic planner and fundraiser for museums and non profit arts and community organizations. With your input we hope to determine the most effective use of the house, not only for the cemetery but for the community as well. Therefore, your participation is greatly appreciated. The meeting will be held in the Medical Office Building at Cancer Treatment Centers of America in the third floor conference room on August 3rd from 6:00 pm – 8:00 pm.
If you have any questions please call 215-533-2967.
This is the one at Oxford and Sanger. It was 1995 maybe, and I was 17… maybe. My friend Ben was a fry jockey there and I was broke. The way I remember it, Ben got me the interview but it’s probably more likely that I just showed up and filled out the app. I can’t remember the girl’s name who interviewed me but she was young too, like 19, yet assistant manager. It was my first job interview ever and I failed at about all the questions. She asked me to name a time I overcame a difficult task and I had to make something up. I remember I rambled something about a fictitious bridge project I had to do for school. The event was a singular moment in me being a tool. But the best part was when she asked me why I wanted to work at McDonald’s, and I, probably trying to sound funny, or flirt or whatever just looked at her and said “I just love your sausage McMuffins”. Which I did. I knew she’d either find it funny or….not. Awe man, I go through a shame spiral just typing the event out. It was awesome, she just stared blankly back at me. She said she’d let me know if any positions opened up but Ben said she hired the next four guys she interviewed.
Anyways, Fox News reports that it was the fifth McDonald’s robbed in the last month when three men brandishing guns walked in at 11 am yesterday and made off with $300. Good times.
Of the three movies we’ve found so that have been filmed in Frankford, Fighting Back is the one that I enjoyed the most. It stars Tom Skerritt(remember him from Top Gun? HE WAS VIPER!). A lot of the action happens down at McPherson Square in Kensington where Skeritt plays a deli owner across from the part who’s sick of the crime and drugs plagueing his neighborhood. The movie really scatters the locations, like his neighborhood crime task force meets down by the Walt Whitman bridge and “his neighborhood” appears to stretch from deep in Kensington all the way up to Frankford. It always irks me when movie makers just blend different pieces of Philly just to make a movie. It’s like when Rocky does his awesome run from Kensington to South Philly to Fairmount Park to Center City back to the Art Museum. Awesome run, not real acurate that he’d go for a 36 mile morning jog. Anyway, I digress. It’s a pretty good movie if you’re into that Dirty Harry/Charles Bronson vigilante action, and I am. Only problem is that you can’t get it on DVD. I got a former rental video from Amazon for $7 including shipping. I got an ex rental store copy so the tracking sucked for the first 20 minutes. Remember tracking? The joys of VHS man. It was a bargain if you’re into Frankford film history(which is really cool since I didn’t know we had any).
Update from Ken Karpinski in May of 2016: ….needs 1982 as its U.S. release year. Any references to its opening credits’ footages and narration about violence since 1963 ?
The movie had some clutch parts, like when our protagonist dropped a grenade on a pimp’s car and then got elected counselman. And there were some good Frankford scenes. Like when he’s in the car with his family and a pimp chases him all the way up to Penn and Orthodox and crashes him onto the sidewalk; ON PENN STREET. His mother’s house is by Penn and Orthodox too, at one point she locks herself in after a robber cuts her finger off and his kid has to go get a priest. And the whole scene I’m thinking “which freakin house is that”. Cause it’s unmistabley Penn Street. I know it’s Penn Street. I KNOW IT. I just can’t pinpoint it. Those three story victorian joints between Orthodox and Arrott are unmistakable.
I will absolutely get some screen shots as soon as I figure out how to convert VHS to digital for as cheap as possible.
We’re gathering quite a collection of movies that have been filmed in Frankford. Check out the comments from our Pride of the Marines post to see how I came to hear about this nugget of information. It all started because frequent Gazette commenter Joseph swears that the house at Arrott and Pilling is in a movie. Sorry Joeseph, I didn’t see it in Fighting Back. But it was a cool flick non the less. But that still leaves us with a mystery. Can anybody identify the movie that this house was in?
Update: We got a comment from a former owner of this house:
That house was infact from the movie Fighting Back. I lived in that house for 17 years. Trust me it was in the movie. In the movie Fighting back their are two different houses used as the Tom Skeritt’s house. The outside of the house is a home at Penn + Overington St. The inside of the house was my house,1329 Arrott St. The famous scene from the movie where the dog is found dead hanging on the door in the bathroom is actually my bedroom. I moved into that house in 1983. The movie was filmed their in 1981. The former owners before my mother bought the house was a family with the last name McMaster. During filming they were put up in the Korman Suites for the 2 months they filmed the movie.
Frankford hosted many of the participants in the events of July of 1776 but what is important to remember is that it was just one more stop on the way to where we are today. In September of 1887, after a long war and a period of governance under the Articles of Confederation, a vote to adopt the Constitution of the United State of America was about to take place.
From our friend Joe Menkevich we have this:
July 02, 2009 (which is the true anniversary of the Declaration of Independence)
During times like now, this is something to be reflected upon:
Monday, September 17, 1787, was the last day of the Constitutional Convention. Pennsylvania delegate Benjamin Franklin, one of the few Americans of the time with international repute, wanted to give a short speech to the Convention prior to the signing of the final draft of the Constitution. Too weak to actually give the speech himself, he had fellow Pennsylvanian James Wilson deliver the speech.
It is considered a masterpiece.
The following is as reported in Madison’s notes on the Convention for Monday, September 17, 1787.
Docr. FRANKLIN rose with a speech in his hand, which he had reduced to writing for his own conveniency, and which Mr. Wilson read in the words following.
Mr. President
I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them: For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise. It is therefore that the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment, and to pay more respect to the judgment of others. Most men indeed as well as most sects in Religion, think themselves in possession of all truth, and that wherever others differ from them it is so far error. Steele a Protestant in a Dedication tells the Pope, that the only difference between our Churches in their opinions of the certainty of their doctrines is, the Church of Rome is infallible and the Church of England is never in the wrong. But though many private persons think almost as highly of their own infallibility as of that of their sect, few express it so naturally as a certain french lady, who in a dispute with her sister, said “I don’t know how it happens, Sister but I meet with no body but myself, that’s always in the right-Il n’y a que moi qui a toujours raison.”
In these sentiments, Sir, I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such; because I think a general Government necessary for us, and there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other. I doubt too whether any other Convention we can obtain, may be able to make a better Constitution. For when you assemble a number of men to have the advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those men, all their prejudices, their passions, their errors of opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly can a perfect production be expected? It therefore astonishes me, Sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded like those of the Builders of Babel; and that our States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats. Thus I consent, Sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure, that it is not the best. The opinions I have had of its errors, I sacrifice to the public good. I have never whispered a syllable of them abroad. Within these walls they were born, and here they shall die. If every one of us in returning to our Constituents were to report the objections he has had to it, and endeavor to gain partizans in support of them, we might prevent its being generally received, and thereby lose all the salutary effects & great advantages resulting naturally in our favor among foreign Nations as well as among ourselves, from our real or apparent unanimity. Much of the strength & efficiency of any Government in procuring and securing happiness to the people, depends, on opinion, on the general opinion of the goodness of the Government, as well as well as of the wisdom and integrity of its Governors. I hope therefore that for our own sakes as a part of the people, and for the sake of posterity, we shall act heartily and unanimously in recommending this Constitution (if approved by Congress & confirmed by the Conventions) wherever our influence may extend, and turn our future thoughts & endeavors to the means of having it well administred.
On the whole, Sir, I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.-
