philadelphia

The TastyPie’s New Clothes

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I’m certainly no traditionalist when it comes to Philadelphia foods—my iconoclastic leanings see me prefer the roast pork sandwich over the cheesesteak, wit or witout—but changing my beloved TastyPie? What manner of sacrilege is this?

New Box. Same Pie?

On entering a trusty Wawa not too long ago, I was confronted with one of these creme-colored boxes, purporting to house an authentic TastyPie.

For the sadly uninitiated, a TastyPie is traditionally housed in a blue cardboard box, the top wrapped in cellophane (a Coconut Creme example shown below, opened in the only proper TastyPie extraction method):

Why change a good thing?

Were these changes merely box-deep, or had some terrible, marketing-driven alchemy altered the substance within?

I had to find out…

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Thankful for . . . TastyPies!

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In the spirit of this most American of holidays, I give thanks for a delivery of TastyPies—including the elusive Seasonal Pumpkin TastyPie—fresh from a Center City Philly Wawa:

So very fresh and moist and lovely!

TastyPies are, of course, best at the peak of freshness, so no need to examine the nutritional contents panel, especially on Thanksgiving. If you have TastyPies at home, just enjoy.

Fan-a-Delphia: An Analysis of Philadelphia Sports Fans

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Phillies World Series Pep Rally: Franklin Square by Vincent J. Brown on flickr.com, via a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.With all four of Philadelphia’s professional sports teams in action at present, Philadelphia sports fandom is in full swing, pass, dribble, and slap shot. And with most eyes on the Phillies and their quest for a repeat World Series championship against the Yankees, the New York Times has posted a nice piece on the essential character of the Philadelphia fan.

Mike Tanier’s “In Philadelphia, Heroes With a Lunch Pail” (Saturday, October 31, 2009) proposes the “Schmidt-Schultz Fan Appreciation Axis,” with the cooly reliable Mike Schmidt, a star by any measure, less appreciated than Dave “The Hammer” Schultz, who helped the Flyers win consecutive Stanley Cups with his grit (and his fists):

Most cities would treasure Mike Schmidt, a three-time most valuable player who led the Phillies to their first World Series title. Philly old-timers, however, swear that Schmidt stank in the clutch, his 548 home runs somehow producing only 274 runs batted in.

Philly fans preferred Greg Luzinski, a portly slugger who played left field like a brontosaurus flailing in a tar pit. Schmidt was aloof and sensitive, Luzinski flabby and fun.

While Mike Tanier interjects a few incendiary jabs typical of most writing about Philadelphia sports fans—”Philadelphia’s most beloved sports legends provided hooliganism and success”—the article nonetheless provides a fair look at the social and emotional context surrounding sports’ finest, most passionate fans.

(Image courtesy of Vincent J. Brown via a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.)

Bill Lyon on Harry Kalas

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For as long as I’ve been alive, one man has called Philadelphia Phillies games, a voice I remember from a tinny bedside radio on summer nights visiting my grandmother in Fishtown, the play-by-play competing with the sounds from the narrow street below the rowhouse. He called every one of “Michael Jack” Schmidt’s 548 home runs. He was the voice of the Phillies for several generations of fans.

The Parade on Flickr.com by thewestend, via a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives Licence.

Harry Kalas passed away yesterday before the Phils took the field against the Washington Nationals in the Nats home opener. And, as is often the case, Bill Lyon returns to print in the Inquirer to help the city come to terms with another momentous event:

Harry the K did play-by-play, and he not only did it uncommonly well, he spared us the histrionics and the shrieking and the rudeness that pollute far too many airways these days.

Harry the K was an oasis of calm in a roiling sea of nastiness and raging negativity.

He was, of course, the property of the Phillies, but he never played the role of fawning company shill. It was the Fightin’s he wanted to win, but he credited the opponent when it was deserved.

I’m the first person to admit that I’m not much of a baseball fan and that I haven’t listened to Harry Kalas call a game in years. But even I know that Philadelphia has lost just a little bit of its soul and that Bill Lyon has helped by putting it right back.

(Image courtesy of thewestend, via a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivatives License.)

From Here to Boo-ternity: The Boo in Philadelphia Sports Culture

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By my quick calculations, the 2008 World Series winning Philadelphia Phillies were only World Champions for fifteen pitches before being booed again in the second inning of the first game of the new season.

From Andy Martino’s recap of the game in the April 6, 2009, Philadelphia Inquirer:

[A]t 8:27, rightfielder Jeff Francoeur hit Myers’ first pitch of the second inning into the left-field stands. Some in the crowd, so boisterous during the pregame ceremonies, voiced the first boos of 2009.

At 8:30, centerfielder Jordan Shafer, in his first major-league plate appearance, hit a 3-1 pitch into the stands in left-center field, and the booing became louder and more widespread.

Sounds about right. As a fan of Philadelphia sporting teams myself, I understand the love-hate relationship that exists between the fans and the teams in the much-maligned City of Brotherly Love.

But it’s an easy trope to trot out, a broad brush to paint a city’s fans with, this whole “Santa-booing boors” thing, and many point to the city’s relative paucity of championships in the past few decades as deriving from the apparently negative atmosphere the fans create. Perhaps a fair point.

No doubt there are athletes who do not perform well when they are derided for their efforts, who prefer to play in comforting arenas filled with unstinting supporters. They don’t tend to do well in Philadelphia, and perhaps they have played below their potential while there because of their rough treatment. But for every athlete who wants to get out of town, there’s another excited by the prospect of playing there.

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Roast Pork in a Box?

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Tony Luke’s recent unveiling of its frozen Roast Pork Sandwich puts Movement Point‘s longstanding advocacy for Philadelphia Roast Pork Sandwich Awareness to the test.

Image from https://web.archive.org/web/20090308002055/http://www.philly.com/philly/business/40631707.html

Any effort to get Roast Pork Sandwiches into more homes and hungry hands must be celebrated, because these sandwiches, with their bewitching combination of tender roast pork, sharp provolone, and slightly bitter greens, have flown under the nation’s culinary radar for far too long. But can Tony Luke’s really pull off a good, frozen Roast Pork Sandwich?

Speaking in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the near-eponymous Tony Lucidonio, Jr., says he can:

“I can’t get into too much detail because we have a Patent pending,” Lucidonio said of the new frozen-sandwich preparation process. “It is the way the meat is made that allows the meat to go from a raw steak into a microwave or a boiler bag and come out as if it were grilled.”

Though he is speaking there about his frozen cheesesteaks, one assumes the process is somewhat similar for the Roast Pork Sandwiches. The proof will be in the pork, as they say. I think…

(Image from The Philadelphia Inquirer)