Wawa's Schwarberfest

Wawa does a lot of things. (Some would say too many things.) But here’s one we can’t argue with: They helped the Phillies reach the World Series. The chain’s annual Hoagiefest promotion coincided with a torrid June for left fielder Kyle Schwarber. In the post-season, Schwarber’s longball prowess waned, so on October 18th, Wawa reinstated its hoagie deal — this time under the banner “Schwarberfest.” The results: Schwarber, previously homerless in the post-season, launched six bombs in 11 games. Coincidence? Who cares?

Redcap's Corner

Trendy places like Thirsty Dice and Queen & Rook are where you go when you want to hang out with your friends, have a beer or latte, and casually play some board games for an hour or two. Well, Redcap’s isn’t trendy. There’s no cafe. The store just recently upgraded from folding chairs. But what it does have is a hard-core dedication to providing an inclusive environment for serious tabletop gamers, whether your jam is Magic: The Gathering (tournaments every Friday!) or far more complex endeavors that make lesser players’ heads hurt by page two of the brick-thick manual. 3850 Lancaster Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19104, redcapscorner.com.

Proyecto Tamal

Pre-coronavirus, Ana Caballero was the chef at Lost Bread Co. But when disaster struck, she lost her job and turned her talents to protecting those being failed by our all-too-fragile social safety nets. This is how Proyecto Tamal was born. In partnership with Lost Bread and in collaboration with two families each week, Caballero does a weekly tamale sale, with recipes defined by the partner families and supplies covered by Venmo donations (@proyecto-tamal). All money raised goes to the families she works with. An average run of 400 tamales can mean $1,500 for a family in need. To Philly’s credit, the tamales have been selling out fast every week. lost-bread-co.myshopify.com/collections/project-tamale.

The Heroes of the I-95 Rebuild

When we got the news in June that a tragic tractor-trailer fire had taken out a portion of I-95, we all had the same collective thought, perhaps expressed best by city managing director Tumar Alexander: “I-95 will be impacted for a long time, for a long time.” But Josh Shapiro — doing his new-governor flex and demonstrating an undeniable knack for seizing a big moment — wasn’t having any of that. He promptly set in motion a flurry of emergency declarations and resource-marshaling we’ve not seen round here since the pope’s visit.

He was aided by a bit of kismet. There was the blink-and-you-missed-it demolition job by Deptford’s C. Abbonizio Contractors, who happened to be working nearby on a different I-95 project. Then we all became experts on foamed glass aggregate, thanks to Delco’s Aeroaggregates, providers of the miracle backfill material — made of recycled bottles! — that temporary lanes would be built upon. And there was the rebuild by South Philly-based Buckley & Company, which also had its equipment nearby, for work on the I-95/Betsy Ross Bridge interchange. Serendipity! PennDOT chief Mike Carroll arrived on the scene within hours and lived out of a Jeep as he planned and orchestrated the rebuild. And thanks to the wildly popular I-95 livestream, the city had something new to cheer for.

The collapse played into the “Bad things happen in Philadelphia”­ narrative. The reopening less than two weeks later neatly flipped that gloomy fallacy on its head. Well played, Brotherly Lovers!

Ready-to-Drink Cocktails

Lansdale’s Boardroom Spirits founder Marat Mamedov says he noticed the rise of malt-based seltzers, knew canned cocktails would be the next big trend, and started canning a Moscow Mule. Made with the distillery’s Brazilian-ginger-root-infused vodka, the effervescent drink is not too sweet and totally refreshing — a tough balance to strike in a can.

“When you have a clean canvas to work with, which the vodka offers, you can let the other flavors shine through in a bigger manner without off-putting notes,” says Mamedov.

ALCO, one arm of Kensington-based New Liberty Distillery, canned classics like vodka soda and gin and tonic with the brand’s own spirits plus fresh ingredients — ­t­onic from ­century-old soft-drink company Natrona Bottling Company and real lemon and lime juices.

Others in Philly didn’t go so far as to can their concoctions, but they found creative ways to get them into eager drinkers’ hands this past year (well, while to-go cocktails were still legal), including Paul MacDonald at Friday Saturday Sunday and Eddie Adams, head bartender at Bar Hygge. Drawing on the ingenuity that makes them stand-out drink-makers even when we’re not in the midst of a global pandemic, both bartenders figured out how to keep the cocktails coming.

Adams made a steady stream of seasonal punch, which he offered in single-serving pouches or large-format glass bottles. Those came with a bottle of club soda plus a special mix of raw sugar, salt, lavender and coriander so you could rim your glass at home — a fancy touch in not-so-fancy times.

At FSS, MacDonald didn’t limit himself to any specific cocktail but instead bottled (or poured into a single-serving plastic cup) pretty much everything on the menu, except, he says, for the swizzles, which rely on packed-down pellet ice, and the egg-white drinks, which depend on that freshly shaken texture. “Fulfilling off-menu or bartender’s-pick requests has always been a big part of our cocktail program, so I did my best to keep that up when possible,” MacDonald says.

A grateful, slightly tipsy city salutes these libation innovations (and hopes the politicians in Harrisburg get their heads out of the cooler long enough to sign a permanent to-go-cocktail bill).

McGlinchey's

I remember the first time I went to McGlinchey's, the notoriously divey (and smokey) dive bar on 15th Street. It was just after my 21st birthday (I'm 39 now, egad!), and I heard that the beers were some of the cheapest in the city, which is all I needed to know. Given that these were the days before Philadelphia was Beer Town U.S.A., I ordered a Rolling Rock. Within minutes, I managed to get screamed at by the prickly bartender and have a beer spilled on me. On a later visit, a blonde bartender pegged me in the eye with an ice cube, and a girl puked on my shoes. Little has changed. Unlike most dive bars in Philadelphia, which go through waves of cliques and trends (Bob & Barbara's is a good case in point), McGlinchey's is still the same old school McGlinchey's it was back in the good old days when every bar in the city allowed you to light up. And the cast of regulars that bellies up to the bar each night hell, each lunchtime, at this place is a study in colorful characters, so much so that Philadelphia photographer (and former McGlinchey's bartender) Sarah Stolfa won a New York Times photography contest for The Regulars, her series of pics of some of McGlinchey's most dedicated drinkers. You can have your gastropubs and trendy dive bars that have to actually try to be dive bars. Gritty, no-frills McGlinchey's is the real deal. Oh you can find all sorts of fancy beers here now, that's true... but don't worry; they still have the $3 Rolling Rock 20 oz. draft. And the jukebox is now one of those irritating play-anything models. But the bathrooms are still filthy and graffiti-covered, with barely enough room to stand up and pee (and God forbid you have to do more). You can still get a 75-cent hot dog from a crock-potted pool of questionable liquid. And if you so much as let a finger dangle into the waitress's service space at the bar, she will put a verbal beatdown on you. But that's okay. It's McGlinchey's. It's always been that way, and I, for one, hope it never changes. 259 South 15th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19102, mcglincheys.com.