Ha.

No.

The current real estate market, especially on rentals, is basically engaged in price fixing. They all use a single algorithm based pricing service. One that's major innovation was discarding the idea of maximizing occupancy in favor of high turn over and continual rent or price increases.

We also have a tax system in the US that gives massive write offs for real estate losses due to vacancy, and allows pass through of those losses to individuals. And breaking them up over multiple years. That's how Trump ended up not paying taxes for a decade.

Then there's the consolidation of housing, particularly single family homes by investment capital and major banks. Which practically speaking means there's always a buyer.

Nationally we've been hearing housing costs would be going down for a variety of reasons since the great recession. They've just continued to sky rocket.

What tends to happen with this model of development. Is it actually reduces supply of middle income housing. As more and more space gets pushed as high priced housing, regardless of demand. Fewer and fewer units are available to most residents, driving up average rents.

The new expensive units, turn and burn, often sitting vacant. Then get flipped to a bank or sold off as investment properties.

Without a crash of some sort or a regulatory step in I don't see that changing any time soon. We've been watching it happen, over and over, in cities around the globe for over a decade now.

And when that densely packed housing is all poorly constructed "luxury" condos, apartments and parking spaces? That'll sit vacant as a tax write off or sell as an investment opportunity?

There's already a bunch of these types of buildings, though not that large obviously, in the area. A ton of the units in them are vacant, they're expensive, the units are small. And the one around the corner from me has a fire about every 20 days.

There's thousands of projects like this around the city. All target at the luxury market. Tens of thousands of units of housing going in over the next five to ten years. Apparently just few hundred to a thousand are meant to be middle income.

Density is good. But it's hard to look forward to something meant to price you out. Maybe it's a good sign that it's a local developer, but I kind of doubt it.

That is sort of part and parcel of where Tiki is at. A lot of the aesthetic is a bit hinky in terms of stereotype and representation. Along with the history of actually taking what is in effect a tomb stone for a real person and using it to hold up a dart board.

Tiki cocktails have become insanely influential in the craft scene, and historically it really is where a lot of the core of American Bartending developed. But people are cautious about the aesthetic these days. So you'll more often find the drinks without the schtick. Or with an updated take. More pineapples less Hula Girls.

The two takes tend to be leaning into the less problematic ends of kitsch, and then discarding it wholesale for a more upscale beachy thing.

No genuine, full on Tiki Bars. But Philly also has a Tiki Guild, basically a Tiki cocktail specific off shoot of the Bartender's Guild. A lot of the more craft oriented bartenders in the city are involved. So it's kind of a low key runner. Pretty reliably at least one bartender at any of the better bars in the city will be able to knock together some classics. Or feature a Tiki drink here and there.

But the cocktail scene is hinky in Philly right now. There's a ton of very talented people hanging around, and too few places with the right focus and interest. So a lot of the more talented cocktail people are working at like distillery tasting rooms or are pulling off surprising things in old school corner bars.

That is a particularly bad Olive Garden too.

Been dragged there more than once unfortunately.

I run a place in South Philly. We tend to get a ton of people off events at the convention center. They tend to bar hopping or passing through, explicitly exploring. Post up at the bar and have a few, ask for recommendations. Or they'll be on a run through all the breweries, or all the cheese steak places or whatever in a given section.

Explicitly exploring.

The bulk of Americans are going to stick to the familiar. The kinda people looking for the Chili's are probably eating at the Chili;s at home. We're a nation of people that will go to Italy just to eat at Olive Garden.

But Philly is pretty compact, and it's pretty easy to pick a direction and explore. The people who can make the time and don't subsist off McDonald's are spreading around.

We actually get a ton of people on layovers from the Airport as well.

I would say it compares favorably to the Javit's center in Manhattan.

The Javit's is a few blocks North West of Penn Station/MSG. But it's kind of a pain to get to unless you're already nearby, and it's in a bit of a no-mans land in terms of anything else worth doing.

Javit's looks more impressive from the street. And it's been a bit since I've been in either. But recall Philly being laid out better, and it seemed more flexible.

I worked an event for a friend in Boston's convention center years ago. I remember that being impossible to navigate and not real accessible to anything we wanted to do on our off time. Lotta long cab rides.

There was already a convention hall in Philly starting in the 30s. It simply became too small and large scale events started moving to other parts of the city, like at sports stadiums.

This sort of things is de rigueur for cities of any size. Large, centralized, public venues for public events, businessy junk etc. Tends to feed hotel and restaurant business in surrounding areas, goes hand in hand with corporate offices and fostering industry. But also more public good stuff like entertainment events, political conventions etc.

Having this in a centralized location draws that action to a down town, rather than scattering it around the city. Where infrastructure might not be up to large scale events. Or events going even further afield. It's better for Philly to have a big comic convention, that car show that just went down or the like right in center city. Than to have that go down in some big corporate hotel off in King of Prussia. And it's more desirable for the groups doing these events to be in the middle of a city, with direct connections to airports, public transit, nearby hotels and amenities.

Prior to the current convention center the area was mostly a storage yard for Reading Terminal. Though the project famously, and controversially ate part of China Town and had some negative impacts on the community there. Part of why the idea of putting an arena in the Fashion District building is a heated topic.

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>looks empty 90% of the time.

You are forgetting the pandemic. That thing was pretty much closed for 2 years straight. And the sort of events it's meant for have not fully ramped up even now. A lot of things are tracked back, or operating virtually even now.

Prior to COVID there was almost always something going on there. Though with any convention center most of what's going on tends not to be huge events that fill up the whole thing. And many of the events that get hosted at these places are not public. The annual meeting of the state's CPA association isn't really going to garner much attention, even if there are thousands of people attending.

That said there's actually quite a lot going on there recently. I know there's been some food and beverage industry events going down this year, the car show. The flower show was back there this year.

And as goes pertinent anecdotes. I know a guy who works for a table top gaming company out of NYC. He's been to 3 industry events at the convention center in the last 6 months, non-public ones. Tradeshows effectively. Producers, distributors and retailers setting up and pitching/finding new product. Break out discussions about industry trends. Boring shit! But also an MTG fan event of some sort that went down.

His boss is pressuring him to return to Brooklyn, and start working from their office every day. Part of how he justifies not doing that, which he can't afford, is how easily he can get to what are considered pretty critical industry events that go down in Philly. As well as how much easier it is to travel to similar events in other cities.

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>And honestly it doesn't seem to me that even when these big crowds come in that they're willing to explore the city.

I will actually dispute that. I manage a bar here. Whenever an event goes down at the convention center we see a lot of people passing through who are exploring the city on their way to and from or on down time. And we're nowhere near Center City.

Had a really nice guy who ran a specialty plant store in Baltimore, in for the flower show, yesterday.

I know some of the staff at Milk Boy. This is part of why they open so early and do breakfast. Between offices and shit like the convention center they do reliable trade shockingly early for what is basically a craft beer bar.

Chef is more popular in Ireland. There's also Yorkshire Relish and a couple other brands.

They're all related to Worcestershire sauce, but are not all that similar.

Japanese Tonkatsu Sauce is also very similar and closely related.

This is more similar to a chopped cheese or loose meat sandwich.

As goes American regional greasy foods.

There aint no peppers in a cheese steak dude.

I feel like "hero" in the NY metro mostly refers to the roll.

I grew up there. And while it's sometimes Italian Hero, American Hero. It's mostly give me a cutlet on a Hero and give me an Italian Sangwidge.

You'll honestly find "sandwich" used more often when not referring to the bread.

There's also a whole theoretical difference. To the point where I think Hoagie represents a distinct thing.

The New York area Sangwidge is all about meat. Most meat, most type of meat. Here is a loaf of meat that takes 3 people to eat. On a long roll.

And that's great when it's good.

But hoagie conveys something more. Like an actual human portion, a good amount of veggies. The hoagie spice. Even if it's just salt, pepper and oregano.

There's a whole hoagie gestalt, and specific hoagie flavor. A hoagie is a balanced whole, a hero is an imbalanced guilty pleasure. Hell idiots can make hoagie dip and hoagie salads. There are Primo hoagie chips and they taste like a hoagie.

They don't taste like a Sangwidge.

You're not making a sandwich pizza elsewhere. Or a hero, sub or whatever the fuck flavored anything.

Also hoagie is more fun to say.

Central Jersey is a thing that only exists for people from North Jersey who don't want to be associated with North Jersey.

They'll move, they have good rep and I hear they do good business. Probably end up clustered up in the areas that already have a bunch of Breweries already. Kind of a shame. Not a ton of stuff like that up around East Falls. Friends of mine live up that way and they complain about limited going out options.

Honestly the best, most interesting shit they have is often on the bottle/can list. I'm regularly surprised people don't know they have a can list, and that they don't realize they can take it to go.

Yeah i keep forgetting about that.

It's a Monday and it's noon-5pm too. So could go either way. Might get busier as people kick off work.

Allocations for limited product aren't usually announced or promoted this far out. Accounts might have been notified and put orders in, but a month or so ahead would be a long lead time.

Any place that had/has Pliny the Elder is likely on or had access to the allocation list. Elder is also very limited release. So places that had access to that stand a decent chance of having other hard to get RR beers on tap.

The wrinkle is that apparently a lot more places in Philly got Pliny the Elder this year, and quite a lot of them fairly late in the game. With a lot of places having it on tap longer and getting more kegs than usual.

RR either over produced, or undersold it. Probably due to COVID issues. And opted to send a bunch of the overage to the Philly market.

That might mean a lot more Pliny the Younger out in the wild this year. Or it might mean that a bunch of places that got their other limited releases don't have access to Younger.

I used to have a regular that grew up with Russian River's head brewer. When they were putting out the Pliny's he'd fly back to Cali, and they'd let him pull 20 bombers directly off the fermenter before they started packaging.

Then fly back to the East Coast the next day. He'd have me crack a couple bottles and split them with me at the bar. Then tip me 2 more as "corkage" (guy was a wine maker).

I don't generally drink IPAs, and pretty much hate West Coast IPAs.

But Pliny the Younger that fresh. Was something else. Entirely different beer than the few times I've had it otherwise.

I wouldn't go waiting in line for it, cause I'm not about to do that for any beer.

But if this is materially fresher than the kegs that'll hit in a month, it'd definitely be worth trying. I live nearby, it's my day off and if it's not a shit show I might pop in.

I pickup Liscio's kaiser rolls on the regular. Kinda the only proper kaiser rolls you can find around here.

Hold up great for the week it takes me to work my way through 6 of em.

License plates are usually stolen by people looking to drive around in an unregistered vehicle. Or to hide from unpaid parking tickets or DWI warrants. Less commonly to hide a stolen car.

If some one is looking to get away with a serious crime. They don't drive their own car with disguised plates. They steal a whole car.

Some of it. There's a ton of price gouging going on. Fiscal policy can't resolve that, legislation and other regulatory action can though.

I still regularly see $30k listings for white collar work requiring college degrees and years of experience. With a living wage sitting in the high $40k range.

In a pinch Lidl tends to carry this sort of thing. One of the things I like about them over Aldi. They carry more of their European products. They especially seem to get down on German Christmas foods.

Yeah I live near there. Frequent filming.

Hadn't headed out to work yet when I posted. They definitely have the crew out. They usually don't shut down as much as they have this week so they may be shooting something more than exteriors.

If anyone wants to stalk Ron Weasley. I see him by Rittenhouse Square regularly. I think they have the cast staying at The Rittenhouse.