philadelphia

Bill Lyon on the Flyers

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Today’s Philadelphia Inquirer plays host to a great column by the retired Bill Lyon on the current second round NHL playoff series between the Philadelphia Flyers and the Montreal Canadiens.

It’s not excessively objective, but neither is it a “homer” screed; it’s just a very good piece of hockey journalism that manages to recap last night’s game with style:

Goalies are not fair game, no matter how far they roam. But Downie cannot resist. He aims for the goalie’s legs and, using his stick like an oversized spatula, he flips Price. The Canadiens take outraged exception, and the Flyers must retaliate, of course, so soon the ice is littered with gloves and sticks, and unkind things are being said about ancestry. The population of the penalty box goes up by four.

Orange Out, on flickr.com, by MattP33, via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License
Perhaps I’d like the column less if I were a fan of Les Habitants, but I hope not. It’s simply good sports writing, so rare these days and rarer still since Lyon’s retirement a few years back.

(Image courtesy of MattP33 via a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike License.)

In Defense of Flyers Fans

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Freddy the Flyer
I am a Philadelphia Flyers fan.

Am I going to throw my expensive arena beer on you when your team scores a goal? Am I going to heckle you because of the name on the back of your jersey? Am I going to spew profanities for three periods and two intermissions, including choice comments about the mental status of the Mighty Mites playing hockey before the Zamboni comes out? Am I somewhere between a camp follower of Genghis Khan and an oarsman on a Viking longboat on the civility scale?

To judge by the perceived reception that Flyers fans have on hockey blogs and forums, the answer has to be a resounding “Yes!”:

We all know we do… Who else hates flyers fans. They are loud, annoying, rude and just disgusting. […]

I’ve always thought they were annoying, but the game they had today was awful, lucky me, i was sitting between a bunch of them spilling beer all over the floors and being really rude to other people, they were all screaming at people 5 rows above, banging the glass etc…. maybe I always just get bad impressions of them. But so far every single time I see them they drive me nuts. […]

I hate the Flyers and their fans. Their fans are fat ugly idiots who know nothing about hockey.
(“Who else hates them?“)

Or, from this past Sunday, in the comments of Tarik El-Bashir’s solid Capitals Insider blog on washingtonpost.com, courtesy of “Jill”:

Oh, how I loathe the Flyers and their fans. I hope very few of their fans are in our house for Games 1 and 2, but I just know they will find a way to get their greasy little paws on our tickets. Let’s just hope our boys can shut down the Broad Street Thugs.

And “TimDz”:

Flyer fans are the worst. I was at the old Cap Centre years ago and was taking a leak with my Cap’s hat on (backwards). A Flyer fan knocked it off and made a nasty comment about my choice of teams…
So I did what any good Cap fan would do: I turned from my urinal and completed my business on his shoes. He took a swing at me, drunk as he was, but missed and hit the wall…I pushed him back and left him to defend himself against all my Cap’s breathren…the cops came in and took him out in cuffs…I blew him a kiss as he was lead out.
(“Caps to Host Flyers (Updated)“)

Lovely. But how accurate a depiction of the typical Flyers fan is this rather boorish portrait?

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Philly Pork Passion in the Post

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In what might be a first, and almost certainly will be a last, Movement Point has scooped the Washington Post!

In today’s Post, we find a paean to the Philadelphia roast pork sandwich, essentially replicating the findings here at Movement Point a full month ago about the superior quality of the roast pork sandwich as compared to the cheesesteak. It’s hard being a trend setter . . .

Oblique View of Roast Pork Sandwich from DiNic's on Flickr.com

Tim Warren’s article, “Gee Whiz, Cheesesteak Isn’t Philly’s Best Sub,” nicely describes the life-altering experience of his first roast pork sandwich encounter:

But when the transformative moment came for me, when the broccoli rabe mingled with the provolone and pork and juices in my mouth, it was easy to move on. Going from cheesesteaks to roast pork sandwiches was like listening to whatever pop music was on the radio, and one day discovering a station that played Sinatra and Duke Ellington.

Welcome to the fold, Tim.

Roast Pork Perfection

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The Holy Trinity, if you will, of Philadelphia food: the cheesesteak, the soft pretzel, and any incarnation of the TastyKake.

But—blasphemy!—I hereby disavow the cheesesteak, for I have tasted of the roast pork sandwich, dripping with pan juices and sauteed greenery.

Roast Pork Sandwich

This salty wonder has long been available, but it failed to appear on my mental menu of Philadelphia foods before I came across a lackluster mention of the sandwich on Frank Bruni’s New York Times food blog:

And the roast pork sandwich, on a round and soggy roll, was disappointing through and through. The meat had so little taste it could have been mistaken for turkey.

Not an auspicious review, but the entry piqued my interest. Where had this sandwich, apparently a Philadelphia classic, been all my life?

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