Finding Philadelphia’s Hotbed of Creativity

by Paul Brady on

Sitting in a kitchen in a loft on Third Street in Old City, talking to one of the most enthusiastic and driven people I’ve met in years, I began to wonder what would happen if I quit my job, moved to Philadelphia and started my own business. Alex Hillman, wearing a t-shirt that read “I <3 my internet friends,” was selling me on the cheekily named co-working space Independents Hall, of which he’s a co-founder. His friend Parker Whitney was helping, telling me the story of his two years in Philadelphia.

With no real direction and no real skills beyond a liberal arts degree, Parker stumbled across Alex’s email address and sent him a message. After an internship at IndyHall, he started a business with a fellow member, making games for mobile phones. Total time from “lost recent grad” to “ambitious game designer” and company co-founder? 22 months.

Traveling the American Road – Philadelphia’s Independents Hall


But wait, co-working? It’s a no-longer-radical idea that puts independent-minded free agents in the same building, for encouragement, for inspiration and for killer happy hours that couldn’t happen if everyone was working from home.

Indy Hall’s other co-founder, Geoff DiMasi, says Philadelphia is the perfect place for such a radical departure from the traditional go-to-an-office-job working life, a city perfectly suited to creativity and innovation. It is, after all, where Ben Franklin and his Renaissance men friends created the original Independence Hall.

“The key thing was that we cared about Philadelphia,” Geoff told me. Alex agrees: “Regardless of our differences, it always came down to ‘This is to make Philadelphia a better place.'” He wants, in no uncertain terms, to put Philly on the map.

The IndyHall guys certainly have the attention of the city, or at least some of its politicians. City councilman Bill Green is a big supporter, and government staffers are taking notice of the way things get done when fueled by passionate people-and Victory beer happy hours.

Alex told me about Jeff Friedman, who works with Mayor Michael Nutter, and the time he visited a “hack session” that took him well outside his comfort zone. “At the end of the day, [Jeff] said something to the effect of ‘I didn’t even know things could be done this way,” Alex said. “To have somebody who works at City Hall be turned on to a new way to ‘get shit done,’ I think is extremely powerful.”

Alex’s story reminded me of downtown Cleveland, where food truck-driving entrepreneurs sang the praises of their city councilman, Joe Cimperman, when I visited earlier this summer. He pushed through a policy allowing the trucks downtown-a risky move politically-to enable creative people to do what they love. The crowds mobbing the trucks are proof that sometimes taking a risk pays off.

While Alex, Geoff and the IndyHall crew certainly aren’t sitting around waiting for rubber stamps from City Hall, they do see the value of having politicos on board. With help from Councilman Green, they’re working together on a new effort to create “co-housing” near Fishtown, a place to extend the co-working vibe to residential life.

Partnering with an environmentally conscious developer, Postgreen, plans have been laid and property has been acquired. The do-it-yourself hackers, who started IndyHall about four years ago, have gone from imagining to literally building the city’s future.

Big Apple Beer Gardens Making a Comeback

by David Farley on
Let us consider the beer garden. For many of us, the lasting imagine of this outdoor suds-flowing extravaganza is one of older gentlemen showing great prowess in swinging one-liter steins of beer while lederhosen-clad musicians hammer out polka tunes on accordions. Sausages are consumed. Women in dirndls patrol the aisles, six or eight mugs of beer clasped between their fingers, plopping them in front of anyone who’s swinging an empty.

This was far from the scene at the beer garden where I was imbibing late last week. There wasn’t an accordion or gray head in sight. Instead, MGMT blared from the speakers and young men (and women) in ironic t-shirts and baseball caps (one guy wearing an ’80s-era Milwaukie Brewers cap, fittingly enough), were laughing and toasting and slamming their empty pint glasses down. Here is where one might be tempted to insert a cliché phrase about this not being your vater‘s biergarten; I’ll resist. I was actually in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, hipster mecca, and home of a a few new beer gardens.

Which is rather significant when put in the context of the history of New York’s outdoor drinking spots (a history surely everyone knows, right? Right). For decades, New York City had only one beer garden. Bohemian Hall (known to most New Yorkers as “the beer garden in Astoria”) is of Czech provenance, and opened in 1911, a time when beer culture was at an acme in the United States (more on that later). In the last few years, however, there has been an overflow of beer gardens opening in New York, a welcome sign for a city that has long lacked adequate outdoor drinking venues. Big Apple beer gardens are making a comeback.

But why was this suddenly happening? How is it that in the last few years several beer gardens have been blooming in New York? Here’s the exhaustive list: the Cologne-accented Loreley, Radegast, Goods, and Berry Park all in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; the Eataly-owned rooftop La Birreria, The Lot, the Standard Biergarten (the latter two bookend the new High Line Park), BeerParc (in the Eventi Hotel) and Bier International, all in Manhattan; plus there’s Studio Square in Long Island City, Queens and Mission Dolores in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

“The first reason,” says Michael Momm, who owns the Loreley beer garden on the Lower East Side and its new sibling of the same name in Williamsburg, “is the craft beer movement. When I came here 25 years ago, you could only get beers like Becks and Heineken in a bottle. There’s so much more availability and awareness and interest in beer now.”


At one time there were hundreds of beer gardens just in Queens. Brooklyn boasted almost fifty breweries. In 1873, there were 4,000 breweries in the United States. But anti-German sentiment during and after World War I and Prohibition pretty much killed off beer culture in America. As Burkhard Bilger wrote in a fascinating profile in the New Yorker of Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head brewery owner, “Beer went from barrel to bottle and from saloon to home refrigerator, and only the largest companies could afford to manufacture and distribute it.” In 1965, Bilger notes, America had one craft brewery — Anchor Steam, in San Francisco; today there are over 1500. Craft beer, experts predict, will accounts for 20 percent of the beer market in the next decade.

Raj Moorjani and Hope Tarr noticed the sudden handful of beer gardens popping up (or, rather, that there were suddenly cool outdoor places to drink they’d never heard of, like Goods in Williamsburg) and checked to see if there was an app for that. There wasn’t and BeerGardensNYC was born, a New York City beer garden locator, which launched in September 2010. They agree the craft beer movement has a lot to do with the spread of beer gardens, but also say the recent recession has played a large role. “A group of people can go hangout at a beer garden and have a good time for cheap,” says Moorjani.

Tarr, a romance novelist and travel writer, adds: “A few years ago there was a lot of attention on classic cocktails. But now you have the same attention being drawn to something else. And that is beer and beer gardens. You don’t have to go to Germany to drink a good Radesberger Pilsner anymore.”

And cheers to that. Momm takes it a step further saying it’s “capitalism in action.”

“People see what works. We’ve had people come into Loreley asking about who our food purveyors are and where we buy our furniture. This is just what happens in the restaurant business.”

What will be next? Will beer gardens continue to blossom all over New York and beyond? Momm is about ready to open a Loreley in Los Angeles.

But here’s what I think: sandwiched beween Berry Park and Lorely is the brand new Spritzenhaus, a massive Bavarian-style beer hall. I’d be willing to bet a beer or two someone has come into Spritzenhaus already asking where they got their furniture.

Yellowstone to host “summer camp for grown-ups” in September

by Kraig Becker on
Autumn is always a special time in Yellowstone National Park as the trees begin to display their brilliant fall colors before they shed their leaves altogether. The cooler temperatures put the wildlife on the move once again and the crisp air makes it a perfect time to explore the mountain trails. It doesn’t hurt that the crowds drop off dramatically as well, providing a true sense of solitude throughout the park.

In September, the Yellowstone Association Institute will host one of their more popular events, the Roosevelt Rendezvous, which is a part of their Lodging and Learning programs. These special programs allow visitors to spend their days touring Yellowstone with an experienced guide, who often provide access to lesser known, off the beaten path, areas. Those guides also share unique perspectives and insights into the natural history and ecosystem of the park that the average visitor wouldn’t get on their own.

The Roosevelt Rendezvous is affectionately seen as “summer camp for adults,” offering a dash of adventure during the day, mixed with great food and lodging at night. The four day program includes wildlife viewing and visits to Yellowstone’s famous thermal and geological features, led by the YAI’s trained naturalist guides. Day hikes of varying levels of difficulty allow travelers to get an up close and personal look at the park’s natural wonders, while mini-workshops in photography will help them capture the perfect picture along the way.

At the end of the day, visitors will return to the Roosevelt Lodge, where they’ll have an opportunity to share their adventures with the other travelers over a fine meal. The Roosevelt is one of the most popular lodges in any of the national parks, and it is typically closed in September, but it will remains open for the exclusive use of YAI during this program. Located near the Lamar Valley region, the Roosevelt is in close proximity to one of the greatest concentrations of wildlife in all of North America.

Reservations for the Roosevelt Rendezvous are available on September 9th, 13th, and 17th for $729 double occupancy. That price includes all accommodations, in-park transportation, meals, guides, and daily activities.

Carbon footprint study results we can do something with

by Chris Owen on

Brighter Planet, the environmental group that recently teamed up with MasterCard to offer corporate customers carbon footprint reports, is always looking for a better way to track and impact carbon footprint accounting. After studying more than 9 billion airline passenger departures, Brighter Planet found huge energy efficiency variables on different flights on the same routes.

Brighter Planet’s carbon footprint study determined that “energy efficiency per passenger mile varies tenfold across the entire industry,” CEO Patti Prairie told BusinessTravelNews.com. The firm is proposing an advanced means for corporations to calculate the carbon footprint of air travel that includes much more information than their current standard.

Factoring aircraft fuel economy, passenger load factors, seat density, freight share and flight distances for more than 130 million flights between 2000 and 2010, Brighter Planet came up with some startling results.

Some flights are more energy efficient than others flying the same route.
“We found significant savings opportunities-the companies could reduce carbon emissions across the routes we analyzed by up to 40 percent if they switched from the least efficient to most efficient flights,” according to the report.

Often, switching to a lower carbon flight costs the same or less too. Right now, the trick is knowing which flight is best and offers the lower carbon choice. Soon, that will be easier to do.

Brighter Planet’s Careplane software plugin calculates carbon output from flight search results generated on travel sites Kayak, Orbitz and Hipmumk accessed using Google Chrome or Firefox with the Careplane add-on installed. Careplane inserts carbon footprints as we search offering the information for our consideration when making a buying decision.

Careplane.org sums it up nicely: “Choosing a greener flight doesn’t just reduce your footprint. As more people start factoring sustainability into travel decisions, it creates a powerful market signal that consumers take airline efficiency seriously.”

Flickr photo by heidielliott

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Atlantic City Is a Hard Place to Love

by Paul Brady on

Somewhere around Indiana and Pacific avenues, I had a sinking feeling. Atlantic City seemed to consist entirely of strip clubs and skin dens, convenience stores and empty store fronts. The beach was a few blocks away, true. But would a sparkling bit of ocean be enough to make the uneasy feeling in my stomach subside? This seaside resort, stacked with casino resorts dwarfed by their cousins in Las Vegas, did not look promising as I drove up to my hotel.

It was a dive of a place, recommended to me by a fellow travel writer, and someone I think of as an Atlantic City aficionado. He told me to try the Inn at the Irish Pub, a spot perched precariously above a dark watering hole, emphasis on the hole, that’s open 24 hours a day. The hotel is the sort of place that charges a deposit of $5 when you’re handed a brass key fastened to a plastic yellow diamond, stamped with a number.

I hiked up the stairs to my room, whose bathroom connected to the room next door, and flopped on the lumpy bed. I needed to call my friend, Robert Reid, and ask him if he’d set me up for an elaborate travelers’ joke, sending me to the inn to see if I’d actually go.

Traveling the American Road – Trying to Love Atlantic City


I told him, “This place is a dump,” to which he replied, “Oh no, I love that place!” I still didn’t believe him. “I wonder if you got a bad room,” he said. “I mean, it’s old, I know. I had fun there… You don’t like the room?” I mentioned that while I’d stayed in worse, that’s not really saying much, coming from a guy that’s slept in a hammock in a garage in Nicaragua, among other less-than-luxe places. “To me, you know what, it’s one of my favorite hotels in America.”

He explained: “Most of my hotel stays are forgettable, cookie-cutter experiences. My room was totally fine. It was clean, this kind of mixed-matched random old furniture, slightly slanted floors, the window with the lace curtain blowing, the people are hilarious. It’s just like, ‘Why does this exist?!'”

Robert’s interest in the hotel was unique, though, being informed by his Monopoly quest. See, the street names in the real estate game were drawn from Atlantic City, and last year, he set out to learn the stories of the avenues that we all know from the board. His trip-and resulting video-gave me high hopes for AC, even if they would soon be dashed.

For those not on a Monopoly quest, like me, it’s a tough place to visit. There are vacant lots, disused by everyone except a lone golfer I saw, swinging an iron simply because he had the space. There’s the grime you’ll find at any casino resort, set a little deeper and in need of a month-long scrub. There’s unemployment, too, bad and deep and forecast to last for many more years.

The boardwalk is a dimly bright spot. Even on a weekday evening, it was busy with families and couples, the famous pushcarts carrying tourists north and south. (There’s a big billboard advertising Boardwalk Empire, the HBO show that’s at least putting the name Atlantic City in people’s homes again.) The casinos, with Wild West, Roman, Mughal themes, do have visitors, if only a few. As my friend told me, “It just isn’t quite Vegas. It’s not even quite Reno.”

Robert insists–and I believe him–that the people in AC are proud of their hometown. But for those not interested in where Monopoly comes from or cheap blackjack tables, it’s a tough place to love. At least you can still get unbelievably good sandwiches at White House Sub Shop on Arctic and Mississippi. I took mine to go.